


Happily Ever After

by paxbanana



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Book of Dust - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 56,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23488765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxbanana/pseuds/paxbanana
Summary: Hiding away in the Andean Nations is supposed to be a simple task:  wait for things to settle after the Magisterium’s near collapse and power vacuum threw Europe into controlled chaos. Despite Delamare’s ousting, Lyra’s pillars of support in Oxford remain crippled and the bounty on her head active. Lyra is instructed to keep quiet, stay home, and lie low. It’s almost as if Dame Hannah Relf and Dr. Malcolm Polstead don’t know her or her dæmon at all. Lyra’s never been one to sit idle, waiting for her happily ever after to land in her lap.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua/Original Character
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	1. Imagination

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to not think about what’s happening right now for just a little while.
> 
> I’m not ashamed to say the miniseries rekindled my interest in His Dark Materials. (Mrs. Coulter is absolutely breathtaking in her expanded role in the HBO series. God, the scenes that culminate in Mrs. Coulter and Lyra screaming at each other through the door…) Then I realized there’s another book about Lyra and immediately consumed it. It was whimsy and depression and fear and self-hatred and love and ferocity all wrapped up in one novel. I have a few bones to pick about the book, but I don't regret reading it at all.

Late one hot summer night, Lyra Silvertongue awoke with a gasp. Her unease and sorrow were soothed away immediately as her dæmon, Pantalaimon, snuggled against her neck, murmuring softly. She reached her left hand up clumsily to stroke down his back and released a long sigh of relief.

“I dreamed…”

“I know,” he said drowsily. “I’m here.”

She lay a moment longer, gazing up at the shadows on her bedroom ceiling before thirst and heat drove her from bed. She padded downstairs, peeling her damp shirt from her overheated skin, and poured a glass from the jug of water in her cooler. Half the glass remained when she returned to her tiny upstairs bedroom. Pan had abandoned the bed to balance on a wicker chair, his paws on the windows that opened to her tiny balcony. His ears were perked high in attention.

“Hear that?” he asked.

She did. Warm strains of a guitar teased at a melody that became clearer when she cracked the doors. The breeze cooled her sweaty skin. Lyra leaned against doors, peeking out the window at the faintly lit veranda of her neighbor’s house. A figure lounged in shadow, one bare foot propped up, a guitar lazily situated on his lap. Next to him, something large shifted.

“Is that his dæmon?” Lyra murmured. She pressed her cool glass to her neck and continued to watch.

“Yes.”

“Never seen one so big. Looks like a bear.”

“Should we call on them tomorrow?”

Lyra considered all the reasons that someone might be in this particular place: outcast, criminal, or, like her, actively wanted by the Magisterium. She shrugged, even knowing her reply wouldn’t be what Pan wanted. “They’ll come around if they want to.”

“Suppose,” Pan said as they returned to bed, “that he feels the same way about you?”

“Well, then we’ll all be quite safe from each other.” Lyra stripped the sheet back but opened her arm, and Pan leapt onto the pillow and snuggled against the curve of her neck without hesitation. She sensed his protest and murmured, “Maybe we _should_ call on them.”

They found sleep listening to the stranger’s melancholy tune.

* * *

Lyra found the local grocery market was best to peruse in the morning, before the heat of the sun and ever-present humidity drove her to seek refuge inside. After a particularly restless night during her first week of exile, she left the house at dawn with Pan in her bag. She couldn’t be in that house a moment longer.

_“If you go out, hide your hair and hide your dæmon,”_ Malcolm had lectured her, his expression firm with worry. She couldn’t resent him for guessing she’d venture out, but she could resent that he forgot she’d already done this before. This was her only freedom, and she would damn well take it, even if her local guardians offered the services of an errand boy for just these reasons.

Salinas was a flat beach-side town, dry and gray. When Lyra learned she was to be squirreled away in South America, she imagined the jungle, fruit trees, and constant sunlight. While her gated community—built by and for rich immigrants—boasted equally rich foliage, grasses, palm trees, and even a man-made creek that fed the neighboring golf course, the rest of Salinas was as gray as the dust that invaded every corner.

In contrast, the market was a bright splash of life, shaded by colorful tarps, with many stalls boasting brightly painted signs claiming their wares. It was deceptively loud and busier than one would think at first glance.

Lyra sat at a rickety table at her favorite food vendor, eating his cool fish stew despite Pan’s wrinkled nose. She enjoyed the combined flavors of citrus and fish. She watched the people and their dæmons beneath her floppy hat contentedly. She practiced her Spanish, thanking the man for his reliably excellent stew, earning a laugh and the flash of his golden tooth. She replied in kind, earning a deeper laugh as he tapped his tooth and winked at her.

She decided that fresh fish would be an excellent dinner and ventured to the ocean-side fish market, wandering through to purchase a tuna steak. The young man who sold her the steak gave her a long look and a smile. He was altogether unthreatening, and Lyra attempted to flirt with her limited Spanish. He was reluctant to see her go, but food for the day in hand and sleep finally calling her now that her belly was full, she returned to the little gated community that she now called home. 

In her exhaustion, she missed the person exiting the house adjacent to hers until they nearly collided. Lyra gasped and recoiled, and her neighbor—a woman! a tall one at that—drew back in similar shock.

“Sorry,” Lyra said in jumbled, stuttering Spanish, her shocking rush of energy turning it into a laughing statement. She put a hand on the hat half falling off, but it slipped all the way, betraying her hair, which had grown tawny under the fading dark dye that was part of her disguise on the continent.

“My fault. Wasn’t watching where I was going,” the woman replied in English. Texan accent, perhaps, milder than Lee Scoresby of her memory. The woman’s dark eyes were wide as they surveyed Lyra.

Lyra wasn’t unused to that reaction. She smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Mira. We seem to be neighbors.”

“Charlotte,” the woman replied. Her hand dwarfed Lyra’s; her grip was gentle despite the roughened skin of her palm. Lyra guessed her to be closer to two meters than one and a half, and the muscling on the woman’s arms was great enough to be an oddity. The strangest part of her though was her dæmon: not that her dæmon was also female but that she was a black bear.

Pan emerged from Lyra’s bag, leapt to the ground, and exchanged a few quiet words with Charlotte’s dæmon. Lyra sensed from Charlotte’s shift away that a prolonged talk was not welcome. She smiled, tucked her grocery bag and hat under her arm, and gave her farewell. Pan lingered only a moment longer before he was at her heels again.

“A bear,” Lyra said over a cup of tea. “I’ve never seen a dæmon so big.”

“Her name is Marjolaine.” 

“Like the cake?” She was amused at that strange pairing.

Pan brushed her sleeve when she sat idle for too long. “Sleep, Lyra.”

She accepted his weight and warmth against her shoulder, and they settled into bed together, Pan’s fur brushing her cheek with each rise of his chest.

* * *

There was a dæmon, sleek and beautiful, dappled in the dark, and Lyra knew she was Will’s Kirjava. Kirjava stepped into Lyra’s touch, and she was filled with love. And hope because in her heart, she knew—

Lyra awoke with a gasp and pressed her hands to her eyes as reality filtered in. She was sweating and uncomfortable in the heat, and she kicked her sheets away. The dull gray of the sky suggested early morning.

Anger bubbled through her. Lyra opened the sliding door to her tiny balcony and sat in the damp coolness of the morning, taking long breaths as she fought the need to cry. They’d taken so much from her already, but the realization she didn’t trust her dreams anymore filled her with simmering rage.

“Oh, Will… I’m glad they didn’t do the same to you,” she whispered.

Pan joined her, but he lay on his side on the scuffed wood of the balcony. Lyra wondered if he felt wary of her, but aside from the occasional twitch of his tail, he was relaxed.

She left him there while she bathed, dressed, and made breakfast. Then, as her body was wont to do, sleep threatened in the late morning. Lyra returned to the balcony, which was shaded this time of day, and reclined in the uncomfortable chaise lounge there.

The dull sound of something striking wood nearby woke her later. Lyra stirred within the shade of the balcony and watched for a moment. Next door, Charlotte wore a sleeveless shirt and a floppy hat and took a machete to the overgrown foliage there, greenery the rest of Salinas probably would weep to see die.

Lyra stirred again when the violent thwacking noises tapered off. Charlotte’s shirt was soaked through with sweat and stuck to her broad shoulders, and she was breathing hard as she surveyed the bare corner of her yard. Her dæmon was covered in foliage and continued to tug at one large, stubborn tree. From this distance, Lyra could hardly guess their thoughts.

“We could ask the Webers about them. Since you won't call on her.”

“That would be rude, wouldn’t it?” Lyra turned her gaze away, afraid to be caught staring. She studied the cracked paint on the porch overhead, surprised as always to see a decaying illustration of the Authority overhead. “We could though. Learn about our neighbor. At least know if the Webers talk too much.”

Pan gave a soft laugh. He stretched his limber body out before rolling on his back on the shaded wooden floor. “I’d like to swim.”

The only pool was more than a few blocks away, and the thought of braving the heat to get there was enough to exhaust Lyra. The beach was even more frightening, busy with locals and tourists alike. “I’ll fill the tub.”

That earned an impatient sigh that made Lyra laugh in reply, and Pan’s expression softened into a grin. Despite the heat, he flowed up onto her hip to curl up on her breasts. She welcomed his weight and released a long sigh.

* * *

The Webers were an old couple that had retired to the Andean Nation many years ago. No one thought to tell Lyra the Webers' connection to Oakley Street. The Webers maintained multiple properties within Salinas’s affluent district, likely earning enough to maintain their comfort in this small beach town. They rented Lyra the house she lived in, happy enough to take a lump sum for the year’s lease and even more eager to promise Malcolm Polstead they would look after her as if she were their own daughter. 

Though she didn’t have fond memories of being a daughter, she welcomed their company and food. They had Lyra over to dinner at least twice a week, enjoying a shared board game and wine—and on one occasion, fine New Danish whisky.

Lyra was dismayed to learn that her hosts were not particularly good at keeping secrets. They told Lyra in confidence the next night that Charlotte was a strange, quiet sort of woman that didn’t like company. She was unmarried—as far as they knew—and never seemed to have company. She’d lived in the neighborhood for nigh on two years and never once called on the Webers. The last statement Mrs. Weber said as if it were the ultimate affront.

Mr. Weber offered his own tangent. “She’s done a lot with the house. Did most of it herself, even. Haven’t seen the inside, but the outside is quite respectable.”

“Isn’t she a writer?” Mrs. Weber asked her husband. Her dæmon, a blue butterfly, fluttered lazily on the rim of her glass.

“I think so. Gothic stories. Suits her, I think.”

Lyra, who had never had the occasion or desire to read a true gothic novel and had yet no evidence to the contrary about Charlotte’s feeling towards company, agreed out of politeness. She thanked her hosts for dinner and returned home to an unopened bottle of zinfandel.

The first week alone in Salinas, Lyra locked all the doors at night, but since the first evening she’d heard Charlotte’s playing, she left her upstairs bedroom window open to let in the music and the breeze. That evening, warm from her wine and the company over dinner, she dragged her uncomfortable chaise lounge onto the balcony and put her feet up. Pan climbed onto the railing and pretended to wobble until Lyra tutted at him. His toddle turned into a prance, and he found a spot on her lap, burrowing into her touch greedily.

When the music started, he crawled up onto her shoulder to get a better vantage. There wasn’t much to see; their neighbor was playing in the darkness of her home.

“I’m surprised Webers didn’t mention her dæmon’s size,” Lyra murmured softly. She shifted her glass to her left hand clumsily.

“They’re rude. I hope they don’t talk about us that way,” Pan replied lightly, his tail tickling the back of her neck.

“They haven’t sworn to protect Charlotte from the Magisterium.” 

“Or to look after her like their own daughter.”

Lyra couldn’t laugh, but she summoned a smile. After a long sip of wine, she sighed. “I miss Jordan.”

“At least it’s warm here.”

“And sunny.”

“It will be safe soon, surely.”

“Surely,” she replied dryly. “But we must find something to occupy us or we’ll go mad.”

Pan’s ears perked. This was the first time in Salinas that he didn’t bear her decisions with the air of tired neutrality. He wanted this too, and that warmed her. It was like when they were children, hatching a plan to get up to no good. In the moment, Lyra could ignore that the consequences of being discovered would be more dire than a clout.

* * *

On the way home from the market the next morning, Pan wiggled out of the grocery bag to sit atop her finds, studying the excess of her purchases. It put a slight strain on her shoulder, but Lyra was glad for the effort. She would have to start walking more, venturing out despite all the warnings she’d received to keep trips out to a minimum. Thank all heavens that Malcolm had been dissuaded from living here with her as a protector. She would have murdered him.

Dame Hannah had written to say he agreed to leave Lyra under the care of the Webers in part because Lyra’s return to Brytain would be accelerated by his arrangement of the details in Europe. Even that thought made her uncomfortable. She’d grown close to him during their journey through the desert of the east, but he was so fixated on her even after they learned what they did in the desert garden. He still seemed like a white knight riding in selflessly to save his princess in distress. She was no princess, not his, and certainly not helpless.

“’cept you are,” she said to herself, thinking of her present circumstances with melancholy borne from self-pity.

Pan cocked his head within her bag, his silent question shaking her back to the present. She supposed she would have to rely on Malcolm and Hannah and Alice to get her back to Brytain safely, hopefully before the year ran out. She was eager to resume her life there, even without her safe haven in Jordan.

Just the thought of a year made her ache with frustration. There was so little to _do_ here. She spoke little Spanish and couldn’t blend in among the citizens of Salinas the way she could in France or even Germany. Her boredom exhausted her. “Ennui,” she said in answer to Pan’s previous unvoiced question.

She missed her busy life in Oxford, where her main transportation was her own feet. Just the walk to and from the market made her breath come heavy. That would not do.

“Are you really this hungry?” Pan asked.

“Yes, Lyra might get fat eating fruits. You know exactly what we’ll be doing.”

He said nothing, but she could sense his anticipation. At her house, she put together an assortment of the seasonal fruit delicacies into a basket she’d found in a dusty closet and settled it in the crook of her left arm.

“The way I see it,” she said at the door, “we don’t really know she doesn’t want company. Maybe she hasn’t called on us because she thinks we don’t like company. Then we’re all lonely with our assumptions.”

“Oh, hurry up,” Pan urged, climbing up her dress to settle on her shoulder. 

She wondered now why she’d ever complained about his weight. He was a solid and strong presence against her, his weight familiar and comforting. In some ways, he’d always been her confidence. Without him, the world was terrifying, but with… Well, she had no fear of meeting a new person in the very least. 

The house next door had a pale blue door. Lyra’s house had a small afterthought of a porch, painted yellow with a gray tin roof that seemed patchwork against the greater house, but Charlotte’s front porch was elegant, with trim lines and dark paint that matched the rest of the house perfectly. The overall shape of their houses was similar, and Lyra was mildly curious to know if the layout was similar on the inside. Unlike Lyra’s house, Charlotte had a matching veranda in the back and no upstairs balcony. 

Lyra studied the ivy that shaded much of the porch before she raised her right hand to knock. She waited. As the silence stretched, she felt her anticipation deflate. Her disappointment shifted to determination; there would be other times. However, Lyra realized she should have thought to write a note for her basket—because surely finding a basket of fruits without a sender on one’s front porch would be strange—and turned back to address that mistake.

Pan hissed at her. “They’re coming.”

A moment later, the door opened, and Charlotte studied Lyra in surprise but not unwelcome.

“Hello,” Lyra blurted, raising her basket in offering. “I thought I should repay some of your music. If you don't like fruit, I have wine.”

A smile opened Charlotte’s face—she had such dark features: dark eyes, dark brows, dark hair, all seeming to hide what she thought except for that smile that set her alight. She had a pretty, lean kind of face punctuated by curved, full lips.

“Come in...” She paused, and Lyra realized the awkwardness of the unvoiced question.

“I’m Mira,” she supplied, holding out her hand for another shake that was even more awkward than the exchange. Pan made a rude noise in her ear before climbing down to speak to Charlotte’s dæmon.

Charlotte had the good graces to blush. “I’m sorry, Mira. I’ve never been good with names.”

“I’ll have to make you remember me somehow.”

“You, I haven’t forgotten. Just the name. Please, the kitchen is in the back.”

The house was fairly well-kept, though Lyra knew from her own untidy upstairs that messes could be confined to the intimate areas. It was a far cry from Lyra’s cracked ceiling and peeling paint, all bold lines and bright natural light. The furniture was a set but looked comfortable enough to recline in. The round kitchen table had remnants of breakfast, but Charlotte set Lyra’s basket on the table and immediately removed a mango. 

She wore a pair of trousers and a loose linen shirt. She was barefoot with her long dark hair tied back at the nape of her neck. Bright morning sunlight outlined her body through the thin linen of her shirt. Like Charlotte’s house, her body was all sleek lines and few of the curves Lyra expected.

This was far more intimately met than most of her other acquaintances—excepting Iorek, of course, who had been completely naked. Lyra stared longer than she should have.

When she looked away, Charlotte’s large dæmon sat against the doorframe, studying Lyra and Pan with an intelligent air. Lyra felt a blush coming on and fought it off valiantly. Pan, who had spoken to Marjolaine at the door, returned to Lyra to settle on her thigh.

“Would you like some?” Charlotte asked, drawing Lyra’s attention again.

“Thank you, I would.”

Charlotte made short work of the fruit, dividing the slices between two bowls. Lyra enjoyed the tangy firmness of the flesh, which went oddly well with the coffee Charlotte poured her. She _was_ a quiet woman, at least at the moment. She’d said nothing past pleasantries; she seemed content in their silence.

“The Webers think you don’t like company. Is that true?” Lyra ignored Pan’s sharp look of annoyance, barely suppressing her own smile when Charlotte appeared startled.

“I...can’t say I dislike company.”

“I like company. I miss it. It's been rather dull and lonely here so far. Would you mind if I called on you a few days a week?”

Charlotte looked at her like Lyra had asked her to trade dæmons. Then that smile brightened her face and eyes into open amusement. “No, I wouldn’t mind. Maybe I’ll even welcome you.”

A sense of humor? Lyra’s social prospects brightened dramatically. “Well, I’d hate to overstay my welcome today then.” Lyra stood, offered a mocking bow, and once they were both at Charlotte’s front door, more soberly said, “Thank you, Charlotte. If you need anything, please come by. You know where I live.”

They parted after Lyra gave a small wave on Charlotte’s front lawn. Pan scampered on the grass beside her, seeming happy enough at their visit. It was a nice feeling, the possibility of finding a new friend even in this strange, temporary home.

* * *

The sound of the guitar was soothing, especially after three days without. Lyra opened her bedroom doors and settled on the balcony. Charlotte paused in her tune and looked up, offering a slow wave. She was more shadow than light, sitting against the warm light cast out by her house.

Lyra returned the wave lazily and took her customary seat with her feet propped up on the railing. It had taken her a week to trust this old balcony would hold her weight; she still had mild concern the whole lot would collapse into her kitchen one day. 

Despite the lingering heat of the evening, Pan settled in her lap. Lyra had finished her wine some time ago, but she was too content to rise for more.

“Who do you suppose she is?”

“An assassin,” Pan supplied dryly, stretching out to his head rested between her breasts. Lyra stroked a fingertip between his ears absently.

“Mm… We could work with that. Why do you reckon she’s here, though? Spurned lover? Angered the wrong crime boss?”

They traded quips, weaving a ridiculous backstory until Pan’s breathing deepened in sleep. Lyra stroked down his back, coaxing him to snuggle closer, and looked up at the clear dark sky, trying to pick out constellations.

She was startled to wake sometime later. Charlotte’s house was dark. She rose from her chair, carrying Pan, and settled in her bed to sleep peacefully.

* * *

Lyra called on Charlotte again for lack of anything better to do.

“Don’t tell her that, stupid,” Pan hissed as she darted through the rain.

“I’m not that stupid,” she muttered churlishly, knocking on the door. She knew Charlotte was home because she’d seen her return from whatever morning errand she ran on most days. It didn’t take but a moment before the door opened. Charlotte even graced her with a smile today.

“Does it ever stop raining?” Lyra asked when they’d settled on Charlotte’s covered porch for lunch that Lyra shamelessly invited herself to.

Charlotte gazed out forlornly at the heavy rain that raised puddles in her backyard. “Hot, humid, and rain are summer around here, but I’ve never seen this much rain in one week. One more month of on and off rain, then we’ll be a desert again.”

“I don’t mind the rain, but who thought tin roofs would be a good idea?”

Even as they talked, they had to raise their voices to hear over the pinging on the porch roof. Charlotte offered a smile. “It helps me sleep.”

“How many of these summers have you survived?”

“Two. I’m used to the rain and humidity though. Pretty mild to me since I lived in Lousain in Texas before.”

Lyra filed that fact away. “What brought you so far away?”

Charlotte turned to study Lyra. Lyra saw the lie in her eyes before Charlotte shrugged. “Cheaper to live.” She released a long breath and said something that rang much more true: “Running away from a lie, I guess. What about you, Mira? What brings you to this dusty town?”

The clash of that statement and question made Lyra laugh softly, drawing another dark-eyed look from Charlotte. “Running away too, I guess.” An old habit sprang, and Lyra barely formed the lie before something inside made her stop. “I used to be so good at lying. Still am in the right circumstances.”

“This isn’t one?”

Lyra detected no judgment in the question. She released her breath in a sigh and admitted, “Just doesn't feel right.”

“You don’t need to have an answer then. I understand.”

It was a relief. Lyra paused with her cup in hand and offered a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

Charlotte’s gaze snagged and hung on for a long moment, then she nodded as she looked down at her own cup. Marjolaine said something to her too softly to overhear, and the moment passed.

* * *

Though Charlotte offered some diversion—in person and in mind—Lyra and Pan couldn’t escape the drudgery of doing nothing. She’d never been much for repose. Malcolm had suggested before he left for her to do some self-directed study, but Lyra had long since exhausted the reading material the Webers offered her.

She couldn’t just run out to catch a bit of gossip from a friend, walk by the river to practice identifying gyptian boats, or pop by George’s to ask for a shift or two in the next few weeks. All she could do here was reflect on all that had happened. And wait.

Lyra found the only thing she hated more than waiting was reflecting.

In the midst of a dreary, rainy afternoon, Lyra’s itching need to do something rose to a fever pitch so high she was certain she’d go mad. Abruptly she stood, startling Pan out of a doze, and began to pace. “There must be something we can do!”

“We have to be careful,” was his reply, though he seemed less enthusiastic about that thought than Lyra herself. His head turned back and forth as he followed her movements.

“I’m not talking about a dip in the pool or flirting with the fisherman. There must be something we can do for someone else. I’m so sick of reflecting on myself, on being so damn self-centered!”

Pan remained silent, his ears perked and his dark eyes alight with curiosity. 

“I just keep thinking about all the people that helped me when you left. So many people treated me like a pariah, but for all those people, there were others who went out of their way to guide me on.”

They had spoken little about their time apart. Pan knew she’d been attacked those few days before they’d met at the Blue Hotel, but the weeks they spent apart were a dark mysterious time. Lyra hadn’t been ready to open that dialogue, and Pan didn’t seem so either. There had been so much to do, a flurry of moving to the next step and the next…

When they’d found themselves with time to rest—on the steamer that crossed the Atlantic to drop them in South America—they’d had other gaps to mend: that dark time after Lyra left Pan behind to venture into the world of the dead. It had been one of the scariest things she’d done to listen to Pan describe his journey in those dark days, but she’d never felt so close to him until she’d learned of what he’d seen and done.

“Can we talk about it?” Pan asked now, his voice small.

Lyra’s nervous energy still made her restless, but she sank on the couch and held out her hand, sad for his tentative steps to crawl into her arms. He paused, resting his paws on her left wrist, sniffing at the abnormal conformation of her hand. 

“It was...hard.”

“Tell me.”

So she did. He was curious about fire man and his water dæmon—“Were they in love?”—especially interested in her description of the immigrant vessel’s destruction, and careful to take note of the Schlesingers, who had helped and been endangered by Lyra in turn. She hoped to write them when she returned to Brytain. Pan curled into the crook of her arm and cried when she fumbled her way through her description of the attack on the train—her voice shaking and stumbling at some parts, whether in remembered rage or terror. She told him of the dæmon traders, and he shuddered, snuggling closer.

Then Lyra remembered a small detail she’d overlooked in the weeks that had passed. “One trader told me Brande bought his dæmon.”

Pan’s head jerked up, his tail quivered, and he stared at her in shock. “Oh! I didn’t understand, but I do now!”

Lyra stroked a fingertip between his eyes, smoothing the natural furrow of fur there. Then she leaned close to kiss his forehead. “Understand what?”

“I’ll tell you. But keep going.”

“Not much to tell past that. Ionides came to me and took me to the Blue Hotel. Then I found you again.”

Pan's fur, which had risen at the mention of Abdel Ionides, smoothed. His voice was soft. “I’m sorry.”

“You were right. About my imagination.”

His tail stilled, and he looked up at her with his ears back. Lyra offered a sad smile. “I’ve been too afraid to tell anyone what’s happened to us, all the impossible things we’ve seen and done and felt… It’s easier to wallow in the mundane reality, pretend it wasn't real. But there _is_ a Secret Commonwealth, and we’re rich in it. I can’t be afraid to tell the truth anymore, even if people don’t believe. That’s not up to us, is it? Just up to us to be true to ourselves.”

His tail flicked once, and then he crawled closer, tucking his head under her chin. He was so soft, his fur thick and glossy, and he smelled rich and beautiful. Lyra’s swallow caught in her throat. “You’re my dear heart, Pan. I never want to be apart from you, not the way we were last time. Sometimes I wish we could sew ourselves back tight like we were before, but that wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Fair?” he echoed, his voice choked with tears.

“You have a choice, and that’s how it should be. I just want you to be happy, even if that means you have to be free of me—”

He gave a soft cry and only burrowed tighter. “I don’t want to leave you! I don’t want to be apart. Lyra, all I wanted when I left was to find my way back to you, to rest against you and hear your voice and feel you again. I wanted to go back to you as soon as I left, but I thought I had to do it to fix you, to mend _us_...”

“Had to what?” Lyra asked, feeling for once like his anchor.

“I went to Brande.”

She took a long breath of surprise.

“I wanted to ask him why he wrote what he did. Why he was trying to separate people from their dæmons and snuff out imagination. Lyra, it was so _strange_. There was a girl he paid to throw a ball outside against the house, and he ignored me even though he knew I was there. It was like he was afraid of me. And his dæmon… I thought they were separated because of how far apart they were, and she was so afraid of him.”

He told her about the blind girl he spoke to, about Bonneville capturing him and then the police capturing Bonneville, escaping the station, and his long journey along the water. “Then I saw Nur Huda, and we decided to travel together to make it easier.”

“That was smart.” Lyra wondered if he’d let her touch him and if she had any right to ask. His warm body was nestled between her breasts even in the muggy heat of the afternoon. She’d forgotten how good this felt. He’d often slept around her neck when she was a child, and just a few years prior, he’d settle in this spot between her breasts as she studied or worked at the alethiometer.

“I didn’t tell you this, but… After the wreck, when we rescued the people who’d been drowning, the little girl I looked after? We slept together on a deck chair that night, wrapped up to be warm. Her dæmon slept against my neck, and I needed that so much.” Lyra felt tears rise and smiled. “I’ll never forget that kindness. He probably didn’t know what he was doing, but it meant so much to me.”

“I’m here,” Pan said.

“I know, Pan.” She admitted with a fresh wave of tears, “I’d been missing you a long time before you left me.”

“Me too,” he whispered.

They lay in silence for a while, listening to the pinging snap of the rain against the tin roof and reveling in their closeness. For the first time in so long, Lyra felt truly content. There were things she needed to do, but within herself… The aching pain that had chewed away at her self-worth and happiness seemed to be sated on her past suffering. She thought of everyone in her life she had to thank for that, and the list was daunting.

The half-formed idea shaped itself, and Lyra said, “It makes me wonder...if there are people without dæmons here. If they need help too, just like I did.” She thought of the modest stipend she received for food weekly and her nonexistent social network. Then she thought of her own talents, of the alethiometer upstairs. She’d been warned not to use the alethiometer, but if she could help someone, what did a warning matter? Bonneville was dead. “Pan, might we go exploring to see if we can be of use to someone other than ourselves for once?”

Pan sat up, his eyes bright and his whiskers bristled. “Yes!”

* * *

Their search was fairly fruitless for the first few days, at least until Lyra found a card-reading den that was cloaked in the essence of roses. With her hair tied up in a scarf and her body drawn into itself to be invisible, she garnered little attention from the clientele. That first day, she saw all sorts of cards, from limitless landscapes like hers to tarots to playing cards. She hadn’t carried her cards and planned to return the next day with her deck.

The place seemed so otherworldly that she feared it would be gone when she returned, vanished into a puff of smoke or shimmered away like a desert mirage. Her fears proved irrational. Not only did it remain, but it remained exactly as it was.

During her second visit, Lyra wandered through the dimly lit room full of rickety, mismatched tables. She found a table with two seats and settled at it by herself. A slow glance around revealed tables with assorted people, each with a pack of cards. Low rustles permeated the space, sounds of a dozen card decks being shuffled intermittently. Lyra retrieved her own deck from within her bag and took a few breaths of the cloying smell of roses.

The essence of rose was thick in this den, and it both softened and sharpened her mind. As Lyra shuffled her deck, someone set a cup of tea beside her. She sniffed the brew, scenting herbs and roses. The first sip was fortifying. Then everything settled into the meditative shift she’d felt for the first time just before Pan left her.

She’d forgotten about this—of using these cards to reach into the future—so focused on her alethiometer, but there was truth in this kind of reading too. Malcolm had been right to warn her away from the alethiometer, but there was no harm in the cards. 

Today, the cards suggested she travel east where she might find another person of consequence. Then, as she’d noticed for the first time, the trance ended. Her hand didn’t reach for another card, and her attention came back to the present world. Lyra slipped her cards back into their worn case and set a few coins on the table. She left the den without any sense of how long she’d been there.

From the safety of her bag, Pan said, “I don’t like when you go so far away.”

She fought her annoyance. “I can’t help the reading, Pan. This is part of me.”

“I know,” he replied, his sulkiness shifting to determination. “I’ll bring you back if I need to.”

Lyra remembered falling so hard into her new truth the last time she’d read the alethiometer that he’d sunk his teeth into her arm to bring her back to herself. She read his concern and promised, “I won’t go so deep again.”

He seemed content with that answer.

Dark was falling, but she and Pan were both firm in their next steps. They walked east over a kilometer before Lyra saw the little café tucked into the shadow of an alley. It had no walls, and arranged as it was in the open corner of a building, its bright lighting made it shine like a beacon in the darkness. She stepped under the eaves and looked around, her gaze moving to the single man sitting in the corner with a paper. He had no dæmon.

Lyra walked to his table and asked if she could sit with him.

He looked up at her in surprise, then suspicion. When Pan slipped out of the protection of Lyra’s bag, and his expression opened in recognition. “Please. Please sit,” he hastened to say in Spanish, standing himself.

“Thank you.” The chair was comfortable, and the tea she was served was warm and pleasant. She smiled at the man across from her. He was of some age, gray, and wrinkled, but his brown eyes were sharp with intellect.

“I asked...if there were people that I could help.” Lyra fumbled through that sentence, and the man across from her seemed puzzled.

“Asked?”

Lyra removed her card deck, and his eyebrows rose. “You practice _adivinación_?”

She could guess what that last word meant. “Dust leads in many ways. It brought me here.”

“I’m Guillermo García. And I’m honored your divination brought you to me.”

“Mr. García, I want to help others who have lost their dæmons. Do you know about a network for that? Can I be useful?”

He studied her for a long moment, then his smile creased his face yet again. “I may call on you to do more divining. Some who wander through hope to find answers to where their dæmons may have gone.”

“Is there a place here like the Blue Hotel? Al-Khan al-Azraq. City of the Moon or Madinat al-Qamar. A place that dæmons go?”

“I know of no such place.”

Lyra studied him and removed a paper from her bag, writing her address on it. “Send me a note or come find me if you need me. Put me on your contact list.”

“Lyra Silvertongue. I have a friend in Spain, and he wrote about you. I will call on you if someone needs your help.” He smiled and touched the paper to his temple. “Thank you.”

The fact he knew her name didn't surprise her. She felt an edge of caution, but even Pan didn't scold her for the meeting after. It felt right, but even the memory of what had happened the last time she went with her instincts didn't dissuade her from this course.

* * *

Lyra returned to the card cafe a few days later, finding the small table she’d used previously empty. She sat for a time, just shuffling her cards to feel the smooth texture against her fingertips and the gentle bend in the stiff paper. 

A woman came by her table and set a cup of tea and a short menu by her arm. The first cup was complementary, but the price for a pot seemed manageable if she came once a week. Lyra sipped her tea and considered again the rich scent of rose within the confines of the cafe.

After a few minutes, the waitress was back. Lyra ordered a pot of the house blend and asked, fumbling with her Spanish, for a translation of the most expensive line item written in pencil. They talked around each other, stuck on the translation for the word _destilado._ The waitress left, and an older woman returned to Lyra’s table.

She smiled, showing a missing tooth, and sat down across from Lyra. “May I?” she asked in Spanish.

Lyra slid her cards across the table, and the woman studied them for a few minutes, looking at the different scenes and landscapes. “Not a reading day,” she said offhandedly. The woman returned her gaze to Lyra and reached into her apron. She asked Lyra to hold out her hands and unscrewed the dropper top from her glass container to drip a drop of liquid into Lyra’s palm.

Lyra held it close to her nose and inhaled. Rich, earthy, and beautiful. She lowered her hand for Pan—whose head had emerged from the bag in curiosity—to take a breath. This was real, like smelling sunlight. It wasn’t English rose. It was the rich quality of the desert roses, even if it left a bitter hint of almond on her palate.

“ _Destilado de rosa.”_

Rose oil of excellent quality with _that_ price? Lyra murmured her thanks and considered her cards after the woman left. She felt no keen urge to flip her deck or lay any cards. Instead, she sat and studied the occupants with polite disinterest. Pan crept out to settle his forepaws on her shoulder and offer his insights.

Then, pot of tea finished, warm and slightly intoxicated from the heavy scent of rose, Lyra counted out enough coin to cover her charges and made her way home.

* * *

The Webers were a fount of information at times. After accepting Mr. Weber’s second invitation to accompany him onto the neighborhood golf course, Lyra asked him about roses. He was pleased to inform her that Ecuator was the top exporter of roses, rose essence, and rose oil in the Americas. “There is a place deep in the mountain pass that it grows. The place is a well-kept secret.”

“How so?”

“The government controls anyone who goes in or out. Some lads around here put in applications and go and work for a time before they come home. The strangest thing to me is they never talk of it. Mind the balls.”

Lyra side-stepped Mr. Weber’s golf ball and watched him wander around it and the golf hole and return to make a putt that rolled the ball in the hole. She was impatient to continue their talk but knew Mr. Weber would pay no mind until he had his turn.

They were playing with a handicap that allowed them both to shoot from the closest previous putt. That meant Lyra shot from Mr. Weber’s placement nearly every swing. Before they’d started, Mr. Weber explained to her the difference between a scramble and best ball game. Lyra was hopeful she’d never have to make use of that information again. 

Now she judged the distance and put some effort into her putt. The ball rolled well off from where she intended it to go, and Mr. Weber gave a tut of sympathy. “Now, see how the green curves?”

She hadn’t and didn’t care. This was the dullest game she’d ever played, and she’d played croquette.

“Is there someone you know who’s gotten the job and returned?”

Mr. Weber, who’d bent down to try to point out the curve of the grass, looked up at Lyra with sudden caution. “No. Not something for you to be sniffing about, Lyra. Have care.”

“But—”

“But nothing, my dear. The Magisterium isn’t here, but there are still dangers depending on where you look. No one has a chokehold on the rose production or export here. No one cares about Dust. But they won’t take kindly to an outsider nosing around where she shouldn’t.”

Later, Pan said, “Kind of makes you curious.”

He was right, but Lyra felt Mr. Weber’s caution keenly. She hadn’t forgotten the drive to travel to the desert garden and where that drive had originated. Like a dog chasing a hare, she’d run headlong into danger and nearly destroyed everything in the process. “We’ve gotten ourselves into enough trouble already.”

“You’ll still help Guillermo, won’t you?”

“Of course. Just don’t need to butt in about the roses. But you're right: it does make me curious. Maybe one day I’ll ask the alethiometer.”

Pan was satisfied with that at least.

* * *

During their next afternoon tea—Charlotte was amused when Lyra introduced her to the habit—the topic of the guitar came up. Lyra, who had learned Charlotte did not do well with probing questions, was more open about the superficial things. So, in this, she felt safe enough to ask about the guitar itself, what songs Charlotte knew, and the mechanics of the chords.

“I certainly don’t play twelve string,” Charlotte laughed. “Don’t do much plucking. Would you like to learn how? I can probably teach you enough for you to fiddle with it.”

Regretfully, Lyra had to decline with a shake of her left hand. Charlotte drew closer to study her hand before opening her own in question. Lyra didn’t hesitate to put her left hand in Charlotte’s warm palms.

Lyra’s fourth and fifth fingers were angled inward, awkward and ungainly. She couldn’t close them into a fist and couldn’t fully straighten them either. The back of her palm had two large lumps where the bone fused incorrectly. Charlotte moved Lyra’s fingers through her entire range of motion and gently palpated the crooked lumps on her hand. If not for her clinical nature, Lyra might have blushed.

“Punch something hard? Rare to break the fourth metacarpal too.”

“Must have… Some hard things that wanted more from me than I was willing to give. The tooth was easier to fix, but the doctor didn’t set the hand right.” Lyra smiled wide enough to show the golden crown on her upper canine tooth. “The hand didn’t hurt so much in a cast, but the tooth was a constant agony. Funny how that works.”

Charlotte gave her a long, cautious look before turning her gaze back down to Lyra’s hand. She probed gently along the bones in Lyra’s palm. “The pulp chamber of the tooth leads right to a nerve so yes, there would be pain. This though… This could still be fixed with surgery. We’d need to refracture it and put a plate on each bone to align it correctly. Feels like it’s just the last two metacarpals.”

“Maybe I will, in time.”

Charlotte’s fingertips barely held Lyra’s for a moment before she let go abruptly and stood. “There’s a way to play guitar one-handed, but I’m not good enough to teach you that. I don’t even know how myself.”

“You’re not a bad player.”

Charlotte turned to look over her shoulder, her smile teasing. “And you’re mighty kind to say so.” 

“When did you learn?”

“When I moved here.” Charlotte turned on the radio and shifted her foot in time to the beats. She paused, stood, and offered her hand. “Dance with me?”

Lyra felt a little thrill. She set her cup down and rose to meet Charlotte, who gathered her waist in her right hand and clasped Lyra’s right hand with her left. She murmured the beats as they shuffled in a simple pattern.

Today, Pan had managed some conversation with Marjolaine, and they had taken comfortable positions on the floor beside the open doorway. The breeze ruffled Marjolaine’s hair, and Pan stretched across the cool tile alongside her. His tail swished to the beat of the music, and Marjolaine just watched. Though she was so quiet, Lyra couldn’t mistake her for a dull dæmon. She betrayed nothing of Charlotte’s feelings, surely a skill that came with practice and more than a little intuition.

For all her wishing to know more, Lyra let herself settle into the moment. She enjoyed the crackle of the radio, the feeling of Charlotte’s hard, warm body against hers, and the soft murmur of her voice counting out their steps one-two-three-four at a time. She hadn’t realized she missed the touch of another person so desperately.

“I never learned to dance,” Lyra admitted after they’d fallen into an easy pattern.

“I never did either. My lover accused me of being uncreative and… How did it go? ‘So blind I wouldn’t know art if it fucked me up the ass.’ Spite is a powerful motivator, I reckon.”

“Sounds like a wonderful person, your ex-lover. But this doesn’t feel like spite,” Lyra murmured against her shoulder. She looked up in time to catch Charlotte’s troubled expression and wished for a way to erase it. “And I’m not kind, Charlotte. Your guitar’s been a comfort to me.”

“I suppose I’ll have to keep practicing then. Better reason than spite,” she said dryly.

* * *

Despite their burgeoning friendship, Charlotte remained a mystery. She disappeared for most of the day, always wearing different clothes when she returned. Lyra and Pan exhausted their brainstorming about who Charlotte could be; what was a fun exercise to start lost its appeal without any truth.

After some pondering, Lyra realized she had learned many small truths: Charlotte was specific about her coffee, her accent thickened when she was tired or on one occasion, drank too much, she wore trousers as much as dresses, and her Spanish was quite good. She seemed intelligent, well-read, and had a much-hidden sense of humor.

From her dæmon, Pan learned precious little. “What do you talk about?” Lyra asked him in annoyance.

“She’s even quieter than Charlotte,” Pan snipped back. “But she watches you a lot. I think she’s afraid of you.”

“Of me?” Lyra glanced at him in surprise.

“Of me too, but not as much.” Pan stretched and yawned. His attention always wandered when Lyra cooked, but he was kind enough to stay in the kitchen with her. 

Lyra pondered all the reasons a bear dæmon could be afraid of a dæmon Pan’s size and could only guess one thing. “Did you get caught wandering again?”

“I haven’t been.”

“Not at all?” she glanced over her shoulder. “I wondered if you did when I slept.”

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

“Pan.” Lyra pushed the food off the burner and sat down at the table to face her dæmon. “You can go. Just… Perhaps if you’d tell me before. And be careful.”

“The only place I’ve wanted to go was over to them,” he admitted. His whiskers twitched, and he rested his paw on her hand. “Malcolm and Asta told me not to before they left. I think they’re right.”

For the first time in a long time, Lyra felt stifling anger rise at Malcolm. “What right has he got to tell my dæmon not to wander? And when his own does too?!”

“They’re worried about you.”

She turned around, afraid her anger would bleed onto Pan. “Well, don’t stop on their account. Just tell me. I’m not a prison.”

“Lyra,” Pan said to her back, his voice cast with worry. “I don’t feel that way! I haven’t. We’ve been over it.”

“I don’t want things to get the way they were before.”

“They didn’t get that way from me wandering or not. I left because of how things were between us. But you’ve been happier, and I have too, even after everything. Lyra, please.”

She knew what he wanted and turned back to him, gathering him close and holding his warm body against the skin of her neck. She kissed him, and he burrowed close, then lifted himself to clean the tears from her cheeks. It should have felt childish, but after so long thinking she would never be with him again—not when he left her in Oxford, but that horrific journey through the desert, the certainty multiple times that he’d faced near death, and waiting at the desert’s edge so many days for him to return to her again. And then in the garden...

“I’m so sorry, Pan. I’m sorry I asked you to go into Lop Nor.”

“We had to go,” he said softly, burrowed into her hair. 

“I think it’s worse than when I left you the first time,” she admitted, her throat tight with tears. “Because I knew what it would be like the second time.”

“It wasn’t. I knew how to travel alone. So did you then because I left you too.” He’d already said he apologies for that many times over, that first time in the Blue Hotel, lying in her clothing to be against her skin, cleaning her wounds, and saying he’d felt her terror, her pain, her anger. “But we agreed to leave each other and meet again that time. It was different.”

“Pan, what you went through—”

“I knew. We both did before we went.” He sat up straighter on her shoulder and was very matter of fact. “We agreed: no more leaving. All the rest before is forgiven. Quick with the food before it burns.”

Lyra wiped one errant tear away and set to flipping the meat on the pan.

* * *

That evening, they visited Charlotte and Marjolaine for a doubtless quiet dinner. After they exhausted talk on the weather—the rain had abated entirely now that autumn approached—they faded into comfortable silence. Quiet had hardly been comfortable to Lyra before, but she found she liked it. Either she had changed in her journey across the continent, or Charlotte inspired that in her. Still… She had her curiosities.

“Where do you go all day?” Lyra asked her host. Charlotte paused as she passed over the bread. She’d accepted a rare glass of wine from the bottle Lyra brought and sipped it as she considered.

“I… It’s complicated.”

“Is it? Several places? Or do those places change every day?”

That earned a smile. “Not that kind of complicated. But if I tell you, you’ll ask why.”

“I won’t.”

The look Charlotte shot her made Lyra laugh. Charlotte had already pegged her true. Lyra was slightly more truthful: “I won’t tonight.”

“I train.”

“Train what?” Lyra shot Charlotte a saucy look. “That wasn’t a ‘why’.”

“Touche. Strength training. I’ve been a follower of Decompe for quite some time.” At Lyra’s blank look, Charlotte got to her feet, disappeared upstairs, and reappeared with a book in hand. “He recommends a certain diet and strength training for a particular physique as well as general health.”

Lyra took the worn, much loved book from Charlotte and turned it over in her hands. _The Art of Health_ , it was titled, and as Lyra flipped through it, there were a number of sections underlined and penciled notations in the margins. There was also a set of pictures of a half-naked man in a variety of poses in the center. It looked dreadfully dull, but Lyra had been in want of a new book for months. The closest library was a day’s ride away. Perhaps she should ask the Webers to order some books for her. “May I borrow this?”

Charlotte hesitated, and Lyra hastened to say, “Or just read it when I’m here.”

“You can borrow it,” Charlotte replied quickly, looking annoyed. For once, Marjolaine’s ears perked in curiosity. “I know it all by heart. Don’t know why I had that reaction.”

“It’s a favorite,” Lyra guessed, finding a section in the middle of the book where someone, presumably Charlotte, had written a note in the margin:

_Bone density was significantly higher in women who implemented weight training three times weekly. Propose longitudinal study about this in menopausal women?_

She knew a few boys at Oxford that ran with the gangs who trained their bodies, but they didn’t relate it to longitudinal studies about bone density. Lyra had also never heard of a woman participating. Dick, of course, called those boys flexing puffs, but she’d heard envy in his voice when he said so. 

It made Lyra wonder about her own body and if she was capable of this kind of strength gain. She couldn't imagine it for herself, but the practical improvement she might see in her ability to climb might be worthwhile. As a girl, scrambling up to the roof of Jordan had been so easy, but she doubted her ability to do so anymore, her left hand withstanding. Her stamina for walking or running was still good, she wagered, but that was in part from running around Oxford nearly every day.

Then Lyra pondered how she’d explained Charlotte’s visible strength. She admitted after a moment that she assumed Charlotte’s job was some form of labor.

“My job is the least physically demanding that I can think of.”

“And what is that?”

Charlotte took another sip of wine. “Not tonight, Mira.”

Well, that was a reminder in several ways that Lyra had no right to ask for more. That didn’t stop her curiosity though. She looked at the wine glass in her hand and said, “Once, my friend Roger and I thought we’d try to be drunk. Found an old dusty bottle of wine, broke the neck to get at the wine, watched our dæmons become the silliest giggliest little creatures, and began vomiting copiously. It’s a wonder I like it now.”

“How old were you and your friend?” Charlotte asked with a laugh.

“Twelve.”

“What did your parents think?”

“I didn’t know I had any. If my guardians found out about the wine, I guess they realized the result was enough punishment.”

“You said you liked being drunk,” Pan exclaimed with a laugh.

“How do _you_ remember?”

“Because even drunk I thought you were being stupid.”

“Well, there it is,” Lyra said, offering a silent toast. “My dæmon thinks I’m stupid.”

“I think that’s an important part of every dæmon’s life,” Charlotte replied dryly, tapping her glass to Lyra’s. Her warm smile was directed to her own dæmon, and the expression pleased Lyra. Lyra hoped to earn more of those smiles as their friendship grew, even if they were directed at Marjolaine.

“You like her,” Pan accused later as they settled down to read what proved to be a dull chapter about not eating or drinking in excess. (Charlotte included notes about protein, fat, and carbohydrates in the margin of the book with several examples of meals that she recommended to herself, all sounding dreadfully dull. Lyra winced at the recommendation for no more than one or two glasses of wine per week.) Lyra turned her head to look down at him, taking in his inquisitive eyes and bristling whiskers. She touched his head, and he pressed into her stroke before settling closer.

“You like her too. And her dæmon even though she’s so quiet.”

“I’d like to know her.”

Lyra closed her eyes and pictured Charlotte’s features. Then she thought of Dick and dragged out what memory she could of Will’s face. Her memory of his features aged with her, and he appeared in mind as a twenty-year-old. She sighed heavily as sadness and warmth clashed within her. She realized she might miss their bench day this year. “It seems I have a type.”

“Just noticed that?” Pan remarked, his voice blurred in coming sleep.

* * *

Guillermo, the dæmonless man, called on her in the early morning a few weeks later. Lyra grabbed her bag, and after a moment of consideration, she put her heavy stick within the bag’s confines. She followed his instruction out into the misty morning, and she strode quickly through the city’s edges to duck into the ‘card café’ as Guillermo called it.

There Guillermo sat. Beside him was a man—bedraggled, bewildered, and dæmonless—who looked up at Lyra in sorrow. 

Lyra divined for him, settling into her half-aware state and allowing cards to drop as they would. The man seemed to gain some truth from her cards, and he shook her hand when they finished, thanking her quietly.

Guillermo rose to walk with the man, but the man turned back to Lyra. “Did you really lose him?”

Pan shifted onto the table and said, “I left.”

“How did you get him back?”

“I went to find him,” Lyra replied. The next sentence was shaky, but she managed in Spanish. “He knew where I would go, and I guessed where he would go.”

“And you survived it?”

Their relationship, he must mean. Lyra studied Pan, and Pan studied her right back. She smiled. “Yes. Better than before, even with all the hard parts. What is your dæmon’s name?”

“Zarasupay.”

Lyra remembered that longing, of not belonging, and a part of her being gone. She said, “Good luck.”

* * *

Instead of venturing to the markets, Lyra and Pan were both itching to stretch their legs. They walked past the fish markets to the winding dirt path that ran the southern shore of Salinas to the tip of the continent. There, they picked their way through a translation of the plaque on the wide fenced sandy area that overlooked brown waves crashing on browner stone and brown sea lions.

Lyra knew Pan was considering venturing out further, but they both judged the size of the sea lions and stayed within the boundaries of the path. There were a few people here, but as they continued on the winding dirt path, all noise fell away. There were some shrubs and rather sad trees that lined the north side of the path, but it was enough that they were out of sight of the houses and businesses that lay beyond.

Thinking of Charlotte, Lyra tucked her bag up tight under her arm and ran. Pan gave chase with a delighted laugh. He darted at her feet, then sprinted up a leafless tree and sprang from one to the next. Her hat flew off—to be spotted by a confused tourist some time later in the jaws of a sea lion—and the bright wrap on her hair slipped. She seized it and pulled it off, panting and shouting in joy as Pan raced along the fence beside her.

Then, when they could run no more, she bent over her knees and panted heavily. The exertion in this humidity immediately soaked her with sweat, but it felt good, honest. Pan’s mouth opened as he panted, and his little face was stretched in a grin. When they’d both calmed enough to speak, he said, “We should do that more often.”

“Yes. We should.”

And they did. That southern path was nearly always abandoned, affording them the ability to do as they pleased. Some days, Pan would sneak among the bushes and sand and dart out at Lyra to startle her. On one occasion, he actually did. They often ran themselves to breathlessness and beyond, happy with themselves and each other.

It was their time, and after some quiet discussion between them, they decided to make time for themselves wherever they were.

“It’s important, don’t you think?” Pan asked as they walked home.

“I reckon so. We’ll do it when we get back to Oxford too. Maybe down along the river.”

“Or the Botanic Gardens.”

Lyra smiled to think of the looks they’d get if someone witnessed them shouting and running through the gardens during the day. All the poor tourists would have their memory of the place tainted by a crazy woman and her equally crazy dæmon. “Yes, definitely the Botanic Gardens.”

* * *

It took very little prodding to get Charlotte to come around to the Weber’s for an evening meal. The Webers were curious but polite, chattering with Charlotte about local news and the weather. Charlotte wore a dress and let her hair down, looking pretty enough to prompt Lyra’s second glance. Even Marjolaine was more talkative than usual; Lyra heard her speak for the first time that evening.

Lyra listened with interest when their discussion shifted to the local economy, and she was able to add a few relevant insights, apparently surprising the older couple. “I have an interest,” Lyra only said at their unvoiced question.

On the way home—a short, comfortable walk in the evening air—Lyra said, “They told me you write gothic novels.”

Marjolaine, still remarkably relaxed, barked out a sharp laugh and repeated, “Gothic?!”

Charlotte’s snort of amusement was more subdued. She studied her dæmon before turning to Lyra. “Did they?”

“Do you?” Lyra persisted.

“Not gothic, per se. Some philosophy, but some might find it silly. _I_ do half the time.”

“Not that garbage like Talbot and Brande?” Pan’s exclamation was startling, and Lyra didn’t need to express her irritation at his rudeness.

Steady Charlotte took no offense. “No. They’re ridiculous, even if Brande’s prose isn’t half bad. Those men don’t ask questions, they’re insufferable enough to think they have all the answers. My writing is more a matter of the relationship between two people, and if that reflects upon the inner person at all. Though maybe I'm just as insufferable and lack the perspective to see that.”

“I don’t follow.”

Charlotte stopped, and Marjolaine shot her a furtive look over her shoulder. “I…” She took a surprisingly nervous breath and released it. “Like, say, a woman who loves another woman. How does that relationship reflect on her inner self? Does that make her a man?”

“Then it would be two men in a relationship, and two men in a relationship would be two women. No. Doesn’t work.” Lyra wasn’t blind to the implication of Charlotte’s writings, but she was careful to act nonchalant. She didn’t feel particularly startled by the thought—in fact, a shiver of possibility ran up her spine—and sensed if she was, Charlotte would run, at least figuratively.

“What if one of the partners bears more similarities to the opposite sex than the other?”

“There are all sorts of people in the world. So I carry similarities to a man because I’m lazy with my laundry, hate to clean, and rarely brush my hair. Isn’t the term ‘tomboy’? But I wouldn’t become a man if I was romantically attached to another woman. And plenty of men are neat and clean and gentle.”

“Yet inversion is still accepted among the greater society.”

Inversion, the thought homsexuals were just the opposite gender trapped in the wrong body. There were certainly people like that, but Lyra remembered one such novel about the subject that pointed out that blanket viewpoint cast homosexuals in the light of one partner dragging the other otherwise "normal" partner into a life of sin and abnormality. Certainly that couldn’t be true, not with two equal partners, and it implied wrongdoing on the entire partnership. Lyra thought of Princess Cantacuzino and the affair prompted by her dæmon. If society hadn’t viewed the relationship so poorly, would she have still lost her dæmon for all those years?

“I think people should be what they want or need to be. How is love between two consenting adults wrong?”

“Indeed,” Charlotte replied softly.

“Is that why you’re here?” After a moment of Charlotte’s silence, Lyra clarified, “To write about this?”

“No. The writing was an unexpected side-effect.” They paused in front of Lyra’s house, and Charlotte turned her hip away, taking a half step backward. “Goodnight, Mira.”

Afraid of retreat just when they were getting somewhere, Lyra blurted, “What time can I call tomorrow?”

“Whatever time. I’m free all day.” The darkness hid Charlotte’s smile, but Lyra could hear it in her voice. That tone eased the worry that had made Pan stiffen against her neck. And, indeed, Charlotte welcomed them in as happily as usual the next day.

* * *

Lyra found the note she’d overlooked in Charlotte’s book a few days later. Written in red pen beneath the protective sheath around the book were the words: _With love, Your May._

She studied the name and the loopy letters and glanced at Pan. “Old lover?”

“Could be her mother.”

“Really?”

“Do you want her to be homosexual?”

The implications of that question were uncomfortable enough to give Lyra pause. She'd never been attracted to a woman before, but Lyra realized she had never ruled it out as a possibility. Still, admitting it to Pan was uncomfortable for reasons Lyra didn't care to examine. Pan didn’t press. He spent the next few hours listening to Lyra read Decompe’s dry, holier-than-thou prose with intermittent snickers and several added insults and jests. They both treated Charlotte’s notes with much more interest.

“She’s a scientist of some sort. Must be. All this about studies and populations.”

“Lots about bones too.”

That was true. There had been multiple notes about bone density and fracture healing time, and a few detailed drawings of bones and muscles and the exercises that worked them.

“Do you think she’ll tell us soon?” Pan asked with a yawn.

“If she doesn’t, I may go mad.”

“You like her mystery.”

“I just like her, Pan. No point in pretending something else.” Lyra closed the book with a thump and climbed off the couch. It was time to work on dinner. Her cooking repertoire had increased dramatically since the first weeks here, in part out of necessity. On days that she didn’t feel like feeding herself, she’d visit the Webers, but she could hardly host Charlotte on leftovers.

Charlotte made simple meals, but the combination of her ingredients was often unorthodox. Lyra tried to recreate a few recipes with varied success. Sometimes it was safer even with her limited Spanish to ask in the market for advice.

Tonight, she grilled halibut with a light marinade and mixed fruit and goat cheese into the quinoa she’d made the day before. The meal seemed enough even for Charlotte, who was the only woman Lyra had ever met who ate significantly more than Lyra herself. As she should, given her size.

She was pleased when Charlotte complemented the food—not by her words, which were always polite no matter the disaster served—but by finishing the last portions herself. They settled down in the living area with the radio on in the background. Lyra poured herself a glass of wine, but Charlotte accepted iced tea instead. As always, Charlotte was largely comfortable in silence.

“Why do you never ask me any questions?”

Charlotte considered her answer for a moment. “You’re here, aren’t you? There’s a reason for that. Here in Ecuator, I mean, living in a gated community for expats and rich runaways.”

“But I ask you questions.”

“Yes,” she replied with a laugh. “So many questions.”

“Does that make you angry?”

“No. I don’t mind. It actually makes me…” She sighed and glanced at Lyra with raised brow. “So you’d like me to be curious?”

“I wouldn’t mind. Maybe I can find a way to tell you things without saying too much. I’d like you to know me, Charlotte.”

That truth drew a startled glance, and Lyra met her gaze without fear. When Charlotte turned away, a bit of color flushed her cheeks. She pondered her question, raising Lyra’s expectation with each second that passed. Finally, she asked. “You’re interested in economics?”

Lyra’s pent up energy released in a short laugh. “It’s a lucrative field, and it’s interesting. I studied it as part of my general studies. I seem to be—or was, at least, on the path of becoming a poor academic. I used to think women scholars were such sad things, playing at what their male counterparts were successful doing.”

The look of disgust Charlotte didn’t hide made Lyra laugh. “Don’t think that now, obviously, but I wonder what I’d think of my current self as a child.”

“Do you have parents?”

That was the question she'd expected. “I did. Hateful people, all my family. I’m an orphan now, like I thought I was before I knew of them. Do you?”

“Might as well be an orphan. Mine are hateful too. They disowned me a long time ago, and I doubt they’ve thought of me since. Why should they with eight other children to raise? Where in Brytain are you from?”

“Oxford. You’re from Louisian, in Texas, you said? Aren’t there gyptians there?”

“Of a sort. My father was one, but he sold his boat when he met my mother. Spent most of his life on a big fishing vessel. Your beginnings in Oxford are a lot more prestigious than my roots. Is that where you studied economics?”

The thought of her childhood spent running with the gangs of Oxford being ‘prestigious’ made Lyra and Pan both chuckle. “Yes, I studied economics, but no, my roots en't prestigious. I was a student back before things…” She waved her hand. “And now I’m here.”

“What the hell could _you_ do to get banished from Oxford of all places?”

“I take offense to that. I may look unassuming—”

“You don’t,” Charlotte laughed.

“But I can cause chaos when I need to.” Lyra sobered. “The truth is, the Magisterium and I don’t see eye to eye.”

Charlotte’s expression went dark, and Lyra couldn’t deduce if it was because the Magisterium still pushed the doctrine that homosexuality was a sin or if Charlotte, against all odds, was a firm believer in the church. The Magisterium itself was strongest in Europe but had plenty of offshoots and even more radical versions in the Americas. Charlotte might be one of their radial followers.

“Are you a religious person?”

“Damn well not,” Charlotte replied quickly. She offered an apologetic smile. “I’m just trying to think of a question that you can answer.”

“Have you heard of the Secret Commonwealth?”

She looked taken aback, glanced at her dæmon, and slowly shook her head. “What does it mean?”

“It’s the magical, otherworldly, things that don’t seem to be possible yet still are.”

“Like what?”

“What if I told you I once met a man that breathed fire, had fire coming from his eyes, who said his father imbued him with the element and imbued his dæmon with water? All he wanted was to find her again. I went with him to seek out a wizard, and in his basement, the man and his dæmon reunited, fire and water, and became nothing but steam.”

Charlotte’s bemused smile suggested she didn’t believe Lyra at all. “Where was this?”

“In Prague. A few months ago.”

Her smile faded at Lyra’s seriousness. Lyra, who had the sudden, desperate need for Charlotte to agree, had a sudden thought. “Have you heard of an alethiometer?”

“The truth watches? Yes. Only a few were made.”

“Six. Truth ascertained from a device that uses Dust.”

Charlotte flinched at the term, giving Lyra hope that she’d at least heard of it. She hurried on before Charlotte could interject. “But alethiometers aren’t the only way to read the truth.” Lyra was up, ignoring Charlotte’s continued bemused expression, and she returned to her spot at the table with the pack of cards in hand.

“May I read them for you?”

“I suppose.”

Lyra ignored Charlotte’s unease, happy at the prospect of showing this truth to her. She shuffled the cards at random, pondering the greater question of who Charlotte was, and asked Charlotte to cut the deck. 

The first card came in hand like an old friend. It was of a woman on a farm. Then there were two women. Lyra let herself settle into the half-aware state of mind as her hands did as they were directed. It wasn’t as easy as in the dark dim rose-scented steamy interior of the card house, but she was safe and comfortable here. Pan was a strong presence next to her on the table, and everything was well.

She laid another card.

The women walked together to an empty land and built a house. There, the two women became a man and woman and lived for some time. There were parties, wealth, and friends. But then a storm arose—its clouds had been hinted in the background of quite a few cards prior, and the man—the protagonist, the first, Lyra knew—grew weary, discontent. He became a woman, walked away, and the woman she left behind… Well, her card fell into Lyra’s left hand, which she clumsily placed on a branching path.

The protagonist continued down a road and—

“Stop.”

Lyra started from her trance and released the card in hand before turning it over. She looked up and was shocked to see Charlotte’s cheeks were blotched with red in… Anger. She was angry. Marjolaine wasn’t growling, but the fur stood up on her nape. Charlotte rose from the table and looked at Lyra as if Lyra had betrayed her. The tears in her eyes stung the most.

“Charlotte?”

“How dare you? Why would you ever…? I thought…” She turned away and snatched up her jacket.

“Charlotte, I wasn’t making fun. I was just letting the cards fall—”

“Fall in that order?” Charlotte whirled in anger, her accusations landing sharp blows. “Don’t pretend that was anything but planned. Don’t do me the disservice!”

After her original anger, Marjolaine offered a look of sadness over her shoulder, but Charlotte’s strong back was all Lyra saw before the door slammed shut. Lyra looked at Pan in bewilderment.

“You mucked that up,” he said not unkindly.

Lyra sank down into her seat, the feeling of wrongness pressing on her for the first time in weeks, and she clenched her teeth and worried at a fingernail, studying the line of cards. Then it came to her, the reality of the truth she’d just gleaned.

She’d read this story once sometime in the last two years. Just like she’d read the other, smaller book the author penned. The smaller book was philosophical, musings on sexuality and self and dæmon’s gender. But the larger story… It was more or less the path Lyra’s cards had cast. She knew Charlotte’s pseudonym now.

“I did muck that up,” she said softly even as part of her marveled she was getting better at the cards than the alethiometer. “What do I do now?”

“Tell her the truth?”

“Show her the alethiometer, you mean?”

“If you like her that much, you’ll have to tell her everything at some point. You saw her truth before she was ready.”

“True, damn.” Lyra leaned back and heaved a long sigh. “I don’t want to wait.” At Pan’s look of caution, she said, “But I will. For a few days.”

* * *

She didn’t have to wait that long. The next morning, Charlotte arrived on her doorstep, damp from what would be the last rain of the season. She looked as unsettled as Lyra felt, but just seeing her brought relief. This was a chance to set things right.

Her dæmon was agitated too, uncertain and downcast, offering a few words for Pan. They settled in one open corner in the living room, talking well away from Charlotte and Lyra. Lyra had to say, “I truly didn’t know. I only realized after you left.”

Charlotte sat down wearily on one of the wicker chairs in Lyra’s living room, releasing her breath with her weight. “You’ve read the book, then?”

“Yes. Both. One of my classmates lent them to me. They were all interested in the philosophy so I had to pretend not to be moved by the relationship. George was an intriguing character. I felt for her. And I think Maggie was a fool to let her go.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes. Is it based on your life?”

“The overarching story, yes. But most of the details are altered to protect her, my Maggie. She’s married now, and last I heard pregnant with her husband’s child.” Charlotte smoothed her thumbs together and sighed.

“What’s her real name?”

“May.” There was no way to describe the cloak of emotions that enfolded that one syllable. “Would you like to hear the true story?”

“If you want to tell me. Coffee?”

Charlotte hesitated, and, surprisingly, Marjolaine answered for her. “Yes. She hasn’t had any today.”

When Lyra returned with a cup, Charlotte studied it for a long moment. Lyra was content to wait out her silence. Then, quietly, Charlotte began to speak. “I knew I’m the way I am before Laine settled. I never thought I was a boy, but I knew I’d want to have a wife. Nothing to do with Dust in that case, right?”

Lyra tried not to show how that information startled her, but Charlotte gave her a knowing smile. “When my family found me with May, they threw me out then and there. May had no one either. So we had no choice. She cut my hair, and I went to work the next day as Charles Sutherland.”

“Is it truly so bad in Texas?”

“The south, where I grew up, is entrenched in the Magisterium's cloak of religion. Rural Louisain is in the thick of the radical evangelicals. Women don’t work, not without a husband, and not to earn enough to support themselves. A woman can’t access birth control, much less an abortion without the permission of her husband or father there.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen? I don’t know my exact birthday, to be perfectly honest. My parents weren’t the type to keep track.”

“So you started working?”

She nodded. “I worked hard, but for the first time, I worked to better myself. I can’t lie. Those first few years passing as a man were freeing. No one questioned Laine’s gender anymore. I was able to go to school, get an education, get scholarships based on my merit, and I was able to become strong in the way I envied all the men around me. No strength gymnasium would ever allow a woman in it in Louisain. The world seemed like it opened to me.”

“Did May like it?”

“Not as much as I did. We were still poor, and she worked more than one job. She always hated working. But I got into medical school, well, she could tout that. We married early in my education in part to qualify for a stipend. She could stop working because we lived off my scholarships; only men could earn them, of course.”

“But there are women doctors in Texas, aren’t there?”

“Yes. All rich, which I wasn’t.”

“What did you specialize in?”

“I’m trained in general surgery, but I focused on a mixture of orthopedic and soft tissue with emphasis on upper limb amputations and hand surgery.” Charlotte’s smile flickered, warming her face for a moment. It was clear she took pride in her work.

“You really could fix my hand, then?”

“Yes. I could with the right equipment and anesthesia. It's not a complicated procedure.”

“Is that what they call surgeon’s arrogance?”

Charlotte laughed, and Lyra saw her suddenly in a new light. With this happy confidence, she was devastatingly attractive. “Is it arrogance if it’s true?”

“Yes!” Lyra laughed.

“Then, yes. I was good enough to land tenure at the medical school in Hier as one of their head surgeons. I was one of three, and the youngest ever to earn that position.”

Lyra considered how old that must make her, and Charlotte guessed her question. “I’m thirty-two-ish.”

“I would’ve figured that out eventually.”

“Well… May was never happier than as a surgeon’s wife. She’d never been exposed to high culture like that. And the salary I made... ‘No more begging and pinching, Charlie,’ she said. Not that I’d had any of that either, but it wasn’t the same for me. It didn’t matter to me other than financial stability. The society itself was stifling. After earning all that, I realized I couldn’t stand continuing to live the lie of my gender. I just felt…” She shook her head. “...like I was going to collapse under the weight of it.”

“The weight of the lie?” That point hadn’t been entirely clear in the novel, but even if it had, Lyra owed it to Charlotte not to assume she knew these answers from a third person account she read several years prior.

“Not the lie itself, but that didn’t help. It was not being a woman. It wasn’t the clothes or the hair or the society, it was just… It wasn’t me. Neither would be me marrying a man to be his wife. But I needed to be me, a woman. A woman with a wife, who was a surgeon, who enjoyed physical fitness and liked to go to plays and read romance stories.”

A few moments of silence unfolded, and Charlotte seemed to struggle with her next words. She tried to drink her coffee but looked at the cup in surprise; she’d finished it. Lyra went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water, which Charlotte took with a grateful smile. Instead of sitting on the couch, Lyra dragged a kitchen chair close enough that their legs touched.

“You know how the story ends: I walked away from it all. I told May I had to find someplace where I could be me. Even after all the unhappiness of those last few years, I really thought she would come with me. We were married. We’d promised to support each other for life. All she would ask me was if I’d been unfaithful to her, as if that would be easier to accept than the fact I couldn’t be a man anymore. So she stayed, probably concocted a lie about my leaving, and here I sit, in Salinas alone.”

“Was she unfaithful?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said quietly. “But I’d known for months.” She hesitated and said no more.

“Do you still love her?”

Charlotte didn’t immediately respond. When she looked up, the sunlight revealed her dark brown irises. “A part of me will always remember the good times and the love we shared then. But no. I don’t love her anymore. I regret the life we couldn’t share, and I wish things could have been different, but I’m learning to let that go.”

“I loved a boy once, when I was just a girl. We never had the chance to be together. I’m still getting over losing him. I know it’s not the same, not when you built a life with—”

“Mira,” Charlotte interrupted quietly. “What was his name?”

“Will.”

“Tell me about him.”

Lyra was startled by the question, then she felt the ache of longing and did just that. She described Will’s determination, his goodness, his strength and patience, and his love. By the time she’d finished, she felt full of her love for him. It was the first time that love didn’t hurt.

Charlotte regarded her silently. Everything about her was gentle except her dark eyes, which were firm in their contact. Lyra nearly looked away from their intensity. “Love has a way of marking you. If it didn’t, would it be worth it? It seems to me that you felt more love for that boy in the short time you had than most people experience in a lifetime.”

“But what if he’s all I’ll ever have?”

“Has there never been anyone else for you?”

Lyra thought of the awkward, uncomfortable time in the desert when Malcolm reached for her like a lover and she’d rebuffed him. In the moment, she’d blamed the soldiers on the train, which had worsened Malcolm’s mortification. He’d never made another overture, even if his need to protect her seemed to redouble. She’d wondered if she would regret turning him down, but the feeling had never surfaced.

He was a good man, and she’d clung to the concept of him on her lonely journey across the continent. As soon as she’d found Pan again, there had been no need to rely on the man she’d imagined so differently than his true self, at least not in the way she’d let her thoughts roam during those dark days. Later, she wondered if she’d been pushed into that too, just as she’d been pushed to seek out the desert and the rose garden.

If Malcolm could let go of her and she could forgive his desires, she sensed they would be good friends, but it was like being stuck once again into the roles of stiff professor and unwilling student. She missed his steady, pretentious letters as much as his steady, less pretentious self. He hadn’t written her in Salinas, and part of her wished he would. She was too afraid to encourage him if she wrote to him through Dame Hannah. But perhaps she should try.

“No,” she said quietly. “I’ve had a few boyfriends, but no one I loved. Charlotte—” Lyra reached for her hand, but Charlotte interrupted her.

“I answer to ‘Charlie’ too.”

“Charlie.” Lyra tried the name out and liked it. She smiled at the other woman. “When I read those cards, I… Dust guides me, but I don’t dictate. Oh... Perhaps I should just show you.”

Charlotte’s hand closed over her wrist, gentle but firm. “You don’t owe me your truth, Mira. Tell me if you want, but this isn’t a give and take. I told you because I want you to know why I was so angry. You don’t owe me anything.”

“I answer to ‘Lyra’,” she blurted without thought. That truth was a release of tension, especially when Charlotte repeated, “Lyra.”

Charlotte looked at her touch on Lyra’s arm and released it. Her next gaze was strained, the atmosphere heavy between them. Lyra almost didn't recognize her own voice. “Charlie, what you said about Salinas, about being alone. You aren’t.”

Charlotte’s breath shook her chest as she considered that. Then, it was as if all intimacy had been drained from her at once. Clinically, she patted Lyra’s hand and stood, pronouncing, “I’ll be making polentas tonight if you’d like to join me.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Lyra said to her retreating back. When Charlotte left, she and Pan shared a look of confusion.

“Did she recognize my name?”

“Why would she?” Pan asked and got to the heart of it as he tended to do. “Were you going to kiss her?”

“Oh, shut up.” Lyra rubbed the bridge of her nose firmly. “She asked us ‘round again. I can’t have mucked things up again so quickly. Even I’m not capable of that. What did Marjolaine say?”

“Apologized. Charlotte doesn’t really believe you about the cards—” Lyra groaned in frustration. “—but she believes you.”

“That makes no sense!” Lyra exclaimed.

“Charlotte believes that you believed you divined it. Either way, she doesn’t think she was right to storm off like that. I told Laine it was the truth, but she says Charlotte doesn’t like to think of things she doesn’t understand.”

“If she doesn’t believe, there really will be nothing between us, will there?”

“You could sleep together,” he offered almost slyly. Lyra looked at him in sudden despair because sex alone would never be enough, and his tail flicked back and forth as he considered how she was feeling. “Well, that makes it difficult.”

“She’ll come around. She has to. If I can just show her the alethiometer…”

Pan appeared dubious at first, but as the afternoon passed, he was increasingly optimistic. Lyra felt nervous and was embarrassed by that. As Pan had said, Lyra did like Charlotte. Lyra would go so far as to say she liked Charlotte more than anyone she’d met in the last few years of her life.

So it was a relief that Charlotte smiled at her as usual that night when Lyra knocked on her door. It was cool enough to sit outside, and they watched heat lightning brighten the sky at intervals during their meal. 

Their conversation flowed as usual… Perhaps more freely than usual. Lyra experienced a few jolts of happiness when Charlotte referred to her by name. With a glass of wine in her belly, she found the courage to ask, “Has there been anyone since May?”

Charlotte, who had been reading aloud a recent review of a play put on in Quito, looked startled. Her dark hair was a lovely curtain of loose waves across her strong shoulders, and her dark eyes seemed so easy to read that night. “What?”

“I just wondered… It’s been a few years... Have you had any lovers here?”

Charlotte shook her head. “I’ve kept busy with my work. I’m not looking. Not sure I’d welcome that kind of relationship again.”

Laine snorted audibly at that, causing Charlotte to blush. Laine spoke—so rarely did the black bear speak that Lyra enjoyed when she did immensely. “You’re too romantic to give up on love, fool.”

“Well, my dæmon says otherwise. But, no, I haven’t had anyone since May. She’s the only person I’ve ever been with.”

“Even though she accused you every other week of being unfaithful,” Laine muttered. 

Apparently Laine didn’t have the same fondness of May that Charlotte still carried, and she didn’t care if Lyra knew that. Maybe she wanted Lyra to know. The exchange made both Charlotte and Laine bristle. Lyra had been poised to ask if Charlotte was lonely, but perhaps a topic change altogether was best. “Do you still practice medicine?”

“I do. A few days a week. I don’t have a license here, and most locals don’t trust a woman surgeon anyway, but some people don’t care if I don’t charge. But I can get you in touch with a good surgeon for your hand, one I’d trust.”

“One that would let you do the surgery?”

“You have that much faith in me?”

“You said you were the best.”

“I never said that.” Charlotte sighed when she caught Lyra’s pointed look. “Give me a few days. But you should have your hand fixed as soon as possible if you’re willing. You’ll be in a splint for two weeks, but hopefully with physical therapy, you can regain most of the use of those last two fingers.”

By the end of the night, they’d hashed out the details—including the financials to cover the nurse and materials, though Charlotte wouldn’t hear of a surgeon’s fee—and Lyra was thoroughly frustrated. That hadn’t been where she wanted that conversation to go at all, but there was no way to steer Charlotte back from her pragmatic planning.

“I love you, Charlie,” Pan mocked not unkindly, giggling in her ear as Lyra walked them home. “Yes, I meant, fix my hand, please.”

“Shut up. You’ve been no help at all. You hardly spoke to Laine tonight.”

“Oh, we’re courting them both?”

“You said you wanted to know her.”

“I do,” was all he said.

“Keeping secrets?”

“She asked me if you’re a good person.”

Sometimes, Lyra could guess Pan’s next move as if it were her own, but that was an answer she couldn’t predict. “And?”

“You said you’re bossy and opinionated and that you’re the best person I know.” Pan sounded quite pleased with himself. Lyra found she loved her dear Pan very much just then. The best part was that he seemed to love her right back. No matter what else might happen, who they might meet, where they might go, Lyra felt she could survive anything as long as she had Pan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Generally, I prefer to let my stories stand for themselves, but upon reflection and based on current events, I feel the need to clarify. Given how...conservative Pullman's worldbuilding is, this isn't something I can highlight appropriately within the fiction (other than Lyra's offhand thought). Charlie's character is NOT a statement on the transgender community; she is not transgender. She only steps into the role of a man because of society's constrictions of women in her community. I'm not propagating the concept that transgender individuals are in a phase or will regret transitioning. 
> 
> To be clear: transgender individuals deserve everything they need and want to live in a way that is right for them. It's sad that I feel I have to say they exist, are first and foremost people, and should be considered the gender of their identity...and not to mention, have personal safety and freedom.


	2. Truth

Lyra was awakened from a late afternoon nap by a racket next door. Pan was sitting on the balcony railing, watching Charlotte’s yard curiously. He glanced at Lyra over his shoulder when she joined him.

She watched the few workers milling around Charlotte’s backyard before the heat of the sun forced her back inside. Pan joined her after a few minutes. “Laine’s there now.”

“Well, let’s be nosy then.”

She chose a breezy floral dress and shook her hair free. Lyra liked that her legs had taken a golden look from all her morning walking and made sure to show as much of them as was decent. She felt strong, vital, and attractive, and it pleased her not to hide it.

She turned from her few wine bottles to the selection of fruits and fruit snacks she’d purchased in preparation for her next visit next door. Outfitting her little basket with a colorful scarf, Lyra arranged her fruits around a small jar of Charlotte’s favorite jalapeño jam, and on top, set Charlotte’s beloved fitness book.

Pan slipped onto her shoulder, gentling the grip of his claws against her bare skin. Lyra paused to study the beaten, dusty truck that was parked in front of Charlotte’s house. The back of the truck was visibly deeper than the front. The bed was full of metal and round weights.

Lyra’s first knock went unanswered. After the second was ignored, she assumed Charlotte was in the back. There was a small gate that shielded the backyards from the street, and Lyra pushed through it.

The backyard was as much chaos as it sounded. Charlotte was in the midst of the work, sleeveless and sweaty, speaking in Spanish to the workers, and occasionally earning a laugh or rude remark. One of the workers resting in the shade saw Lyra and whistled long and low.

That got Charlotte's attention, and she muttered something as she shoved past the man. Laine snorted at the man’s dog dæmon, making her flinch.

“Come inside. Did you knock? I’m sorry.”

Lyra was amused at Charlotte’s quick reaction to the ogling. She pressed the basket against Charlotte’s belly and kept her attention outside.

“All that destruction of trees was for this?”

“It was just a corner of the yard,” Charlotte defended.

“What is it? A square of concrete?”

“Base for a home gymnasium.” Charlotte seemed a bit embarrassed by her admission, but Lyra brightened. “I’ll be able to watch you…” She waved her hand. “Do that body thing.”

Charlotte colored even as she laughed. “Yes. If you want. I was going to ask now that we have men available… Should we fix the fence between our yards?”

“Didn’t even know it needed fixing.”

After brief discussion and Lyra calling on the Webers, it was decided the fence should simply be removed. To Lyra’s delight, Charlotte strung a hammock between the two trees that had been separated by the fence, and Lyra was determined to have her afternoon naps in the shade of the trees outside.

“Funny what makes us happy,” Lyra told Pan the first time she stretched out in the hammock. She watched his lithe little body tense and uncoil in a spring of energy strong enough to rock the hammock. It was always beautiful to see his physicality. He caught the branch overhead and stretched out across it, smiling down at her. “Well, nothing says ‘happy’ like tearing down fences and stringing hammocks.”

* * *

One afternoon, they ventured to a local museum that boasted it had the most whale skeletons in one building on the continent. Charlotte spoke at length to the woman that took their admission fee, and Lyra wandered through the large room. If not for the giant skeletons within, she would think the building was large.

Charlotte found her studying a narwhal skeleton a few minutes later. She paused, strain on her face, and stepped back, and Lyra saw that Laine was unable to pass between exhibits because of her size. Lyra followed Charlotte as they navigated the room on the opposite side, coming around to study the narwhal skeleton from another direction.

It wasn’t the first time Laine’s size had caused problems. In fact, that afternoon, they had to sit in the heat because Laine couldn’t fit between the closely packed tables inside the cafe. Lyra didn’t mind and said so.

On the way home, Lyra felt herself asking, “Why did she choose to be so big?”

She winced when Pan nipped the back of her neck, but the question was out and it couldn’t be erased. Charlotte, for her part, shrugged. She'd been shockingly open since giving up her truth. “Did Pan ever make himself big when he could change?”

Lyra couldn’t remember an exact time, but Pan said, “To make her feel less scared.”

“Even though you knew you couldn’t be a physical threat, right?” Charlotte exchanged a sad smile with Laine. “We didn’t have a happy childhood.”

“Did your parents...?”

“Just a slap here and there. Nothing too physical, not the way they fought each other.” She paused and reluctantly said, “—and each other’s dæmons. It was more that I never felt safe. Laine’s size, my own, my strength, it was to give myself the illusion that I’m safe. Sometimes I wonder what form she would have taken if we’d had a different childhood, better parents. A wildcat, maybe. Or a dog. After all, a doctor is a servant to her patients.”

Lyra was surprised by her anger at the admission, but Pan's nip stopped the words in her mouth. After a time, another thought occurred.

"Do you feel safe now?"

The fact that Charlotte hesitated made anger and sorrow rise sharp inside. Then Charlotte offered a tight smile. "Mostly."

"Was pretending to be a man safer?"

"In some ways, but it was worse in others."

"The fear of being found out?"

"Mm, yes. But there's more to safety now than sheer size."

“Now do you wish…?” But she couldn’t ask if Charlotte was unhappy with her daemon, especially not with Laine right there.

“Am I unhappy with her now that I have money and friends?” Charlotte guessed, to Lyra’s mortification. “Laine’s size is inconvenient in most circumstances. Travel, seeing an opera, going to a bar.” Charlotte smiled gently as Laine turned a frown on her. She took one of Laine’s ears between her fingers affectionately. “But do I regret her? No. Not at all. But I can admit that her size is an inconvenience at times, just like it’s very convenient at other times. But I wouldn’t change her for the world now.”

“I heard of a sailor whose dæmon was a dolphin. He had to stay at sea for his entire life.”

“Mm. Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?” She looked from Lyra to Pan. “But I don’t see Pan being anything but what he is. Small, cute, and I bet a force to be reckoned with when he needs to be.”

Pan’s tail twitched, and Lyra shared his amusement at that description. In a rush, Lyra said, “We were quarreling badly for years. We hated each other. But I didn’t know I could talk to anyone about it. We just festered…”

“You don’t seem to be fighting now.”

“No. Not anymore. I… I wish there had been someone to tell me it’s okay to talk about these things when Pan and I were quarreling. I didn’t think I could, not with him listening.”

“He’s your other half,” Charlotte pointed out evenly. “Even if you can’t talk to him, he can listen to you talk to someone else. But you must know that now, right?”

Perched on her bag, Pan gazed at her, and Lyra felt his love. She smiled back at her dæmon and released a long breath of relief that he was safe and well and here. That he wanted to be here, most of all.

Lyra glanced over at Charlotte after a few quiet moments. “My parents didn’t want me either. My mother gave me up, and my father pretended to be my uncle after he gave me away to friends to raise. When I met my mother…” Lyra thought of her monkey dæmon and shivered. “I don’t know if she wanted to hurt me or kill me, but… I was terrified of her. I hated her once I realized what she was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not saying it was like with your parents—”

“No, I didn’t think you were. It’s a lonely thing when the two people who created you don’t want you. My parents had the excuse of being poor and having too many children to raise. Were you an only child?”

“Yes. Born from a passionate affair between affluent people, by all accounts.” Lyra wrinkled her nose as she considered how two entirely self-absorbed people had overlooked their own egos to be together. She knew she was being unfair even without Pan pointing it out. She sighed. “The thing is, I had plenty of people who loved me and raised me. My parents didn’t want me, but I had a lot of other people who did. I can’t be anything but lucky for that right?”

Charlotte’s gaze had softened though she didn't smile. “I love your optimism.”

That gave Lyra a little quiver, and she ducked her head as she felt a blush heat her cheeks. Both Charlotte and Laine laughed at her response, but there was nothing but kindness behind it.

* * *

Charlotte gave the concrete in her backyard three weeks to settle before she dropped several heavy wood platforms and rolled large rubber mats over it. She spent one evening assembling the heavy frames that would hold her weights. She spent some time screwing the frame into her concrete, swearing more than Lyra expected from such a quiet woman, some of those exclamations colorful French vulgarities. Lyra was suitably impressed.

Within the week of everything being prepared, Lyra learned the new routine: she’d wake up, make tea, and wander out onto her hammock to watch Charlotte’s strange exercises.

It was always frightening to see Charlotte take a weight from the ground to overhead, then simply let it drop down again. It always made her nervous for her feet to see that kind of weight fall. Lyra learned to dislike the dumbbells far more than the barbell.

Lyra had learned quickly that any conversation should be saved for after Charlotte was finished. The platform was close enough to the hammock that Laine would often wander over to rest in the shade by Lyra, watching her human with the air of necessity.

“Do you get tired of her doing this?”

“No. I like heavy days better, but we won’t have one for a few weeks,” Laine said, almost surprising Lyra when she spoke. “We get restless when she doesn’t. She gets...itchy in her own skin.”

“Oh. Because of…?” Lyra was uncertain how to frame the question, but Laine replied almost immediately. “Because she doesn’t have enough mental stimulation. Not enough hard thinking down here. We were always busy in Hier, seeing complex cases, writing papers, and designing studies. Then she could only rest her mind by exhausting her body. Now she needs it for other reasons.”

“Can I help?”

“You already are. Heavier!” The last statement was directed to Charlotte, who glanced back at her dæmon and replaced the weight on her barbell with another, apparently to Laine’s satisfaction.

With quiet Laine talked out, conversation had to wait until Charlotte sat at the edge of her platform and panted in the morning heat. She’d never seemed weak, and after this kind of exercise, she was flushed, vascular, and seemed especially large. Lyra wasn’t sure if she found the physical result of Charlotte’s exercises attractive or the opposite, but the desire to touch Charlotte suggested the former.

This sort of thing had seemed ridiculous when Charlotte first mentioned it. Lyra certainly thought _she_ would look ridiculous doing the same thing, but Charlotte was nothing but focused and was in no way self-conscious. Lyra hoped she seemed that way when she ran down the southern path every few days.

“Your book…” Lyra realized where her thoughts were going and wondered if she shouldn’t bring it up. Charlotte glanced up, her mouth open as she panted, and she nodded as if to prompt the question. “Maybe I’m misremembering, but there’s a lot about being uncomfortable in your—or George’s body.”

“Yeah.”

Lyra had expected Charlotte to pick up the question and realized she hadn’t been particularly clear. “You’re… You seem at home in your body. Did you really feel that way or if that was part of the fiction of it?”

“Oh, I did.” Charlotte’s voice was muffled as she wiped her face with her shirt. It didn’t do her much good; her shirt was soaked already. Then, as if to prove Lyra’s point, she stripped herself out of it, only wearing the tight bra beneath it.

At least Lyra could blame the heat for her blush. There was something beautiful about the broad curve of Charlotte’s shoulders and the line of her chest.

“Not anymore?”

“No.” Charlotte took another drink of water. “I used to think it was because I had these female parts, that it would be better when I bound my breasts or taped my nipples. Took me years to figure out it was the opposite. That by denying my femaleness, I was creating this alternate me that wasn’t real. It chafed.”

“I admire that.” Lyra thought back to her trip across the continent. “I never realized how scary it is to be noticeable until I had to stop being it. Will, he had a way of blending in with the background and making people not see him. I had to try to do that so I could be safe traveling, but… Just being a woman meant I was visible. On that train, I… The soldiers wanted to rape me, and they would have no matter how hard I fought but their commander put a stop to it.”

“They broke your hand.”

Lyra nodded. “When I was in Seleukeia, the people who helped me, they… Well, they didn’t have dæmons. Their parents sold them, maybe.”

Charlotte and Laine’s gazes were both sharp with horrified interest.

“But they were night-soil men, that was the only work they could do. They couldn’t be seen in daytime or they’d have been punished, maybe killed. And…” Lyra wasn’t sure what she was meaning to say now. “They gave me a veil, something to cover my entire head, and suddenly I was like Will. I was invisible to everyone. I’d never been that way before, and it was freeing in a way. Not that I wanted to be seen before, but that I was proud of myself so why should I hide? It was easier to hide though.

“I’m trying to say that you’re brave. For being who you are and not hiding.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said at last. She rubbed her thumbs together before raising her gaze to meet Lyra’s. Her smile was tense. “I’m not sure it’s brave when I have no other choice.”

“What else can it be?”

“Why did they help you?” Charlotte asked abruptly.

The night-soil man, she must mean. “Yozdah and Chil-du. Those were their names. And they helped me because they could.”

Charlotte nodded. She got to her feet, her quiet feeling odd in the moment, and she set about cleaning her weights up. Lyra watched her pull and lift and drop, feeling each second of silence pass like a heavier weight on her shoulders. She regretted what she’d said, was embarrassed and fearful she’d said too much. She had to fill their silence. “Do you ever worry about your feet?”

“All the time.” Charlotte set a heavy dumbbell back in place definitively.

“I keep thinking you’ll break your foot.”

“Nearly did that once.”

“At least you can take yourself to work.”

“Now sure, but not before,” Charlotte said. She took a long drink of water and shook her head. “Had to sneak in and take a x-graph without anyone seeing.” At Lyra’s look of confusion, she clarified, “If it was broken, how could I explain not being treated at my own hospital? I was a man to them, but if I had surgery, even put on a hospital gown… They’d know the lie, and everything would have crumbled.”

Maybe Charlotte’s assertion she had no other choice but living as herself was true. Pan shared a look with Lyra. Their concealment was big, but perhaps not so hard to hide. Yet, the fear of what Charlotte and Laine would think if they knew sat heavy.

“No one knew?"

"Only May."

"That sounds miserable.”

“Yeah.” Charlotte’s smile wasn’t happy. Laine lumbered up to her and rested her head against Charlotte’s knee, and Charlotte pressed a gentle hand to her dæmon’s head.

“May made it worse.” Laine’s voice was firmer than usual, dark with anger. “She was so frightened someone would find out and what that would make them think of _her_.”

If May was anything like her fictional counterpart in Charlotte’s novel, Lyra felt a deep sting of sorrow for both Charlotte and her dæmon. She wondered if it would be a betrayal to read the book again but was increasingly thirsty to. She remembered few details, and at the time of reading, had had problems settling on the voice of the protagonist in her head. Well, she could read it in Charlotte’s quiet voice, couldn’t she?

“It wasn’t so bad,” Charlotte tried to hedge. “Things were good at the beginning.”

“She took and took and took. She took everything you had to give and kept asking for more. And when you asked for one thing, she wouldn’t give it.”

“What did you ask for?” Pan asked.

“To be myself.”

“She told you to kill yourself rather than be yourself!”

“That’s enough, Laine,” Charlotte snapped. Her dæmon flinched and turned her back on Charlotte in anger. Charlotte visibly collected herself. “Lyra, the last materials I need for your hand surgery are coming in this week. The procedure will have to be a specific day. The clinic will be set for midweek if that works for you.”

“Let me check my busy social calendar.” Pleased to earn a smile with her sarcasm, Lyra said, “Yes. I’m free.” Then a touch of worry. “What is the procedure?”

Charlotte’s soft expression suggested she’d sensed Lyra’s nerves. “I’ll go over the particulars with you tonight or tomorrow.”

* * *

Lyra divined for one more dæmonless person— _desalmados_ , they were called here—before her surgery. It was a strange, fearful experience to give herself up to the nurse, but she remembered nothing from the procedure and awoke feeling refreshed and painless, though her hand was bound up in a stiff bandage. Apparently the operation was quick.

“You’ll be in the splint for two weeks,” Charlotte told her as she drove them back home. She’d borrowed the truck from the clinic, and Marjolaine settled into the bed as Pan lay curled around Lyra’s neck. He felt as sleepy as she did and mumbled discontentedly when the truck hit a pothole. Lyra studied the splint before her eyes fell closed.

“I’ll stay with you tonight. Let me know if your hand starts hurting.”

It did start hurting, but Lyra saw to that herself by swallowing one of the pills Charlotte set beside her bed. She awoke bleary and aching again in the morning, but it was a manageable pain. When Lyra picked up Pan and shuffled downstairs, Charlotte was sitting at her table with coffee and breakfast prepared. Lyra still wore her hospital smocks, but Charlotte had changed into shorts and a linen shirt.

They ate quietly, sitting adjacent with their feet brushing. Lyra studied the line of her knuckles as she accepted more of Charlotte’s favorite coffee and wondered at all the things settling to right in her life. Charlotte, for her part, removed Lyra’s splint and the bandage that covered her hand. It was swollen and bruised with two incisions that traced the course of the last two bones of her left hand.

Charlotte cradled Lyra’s hand in her own, her fingers firm but gentle as she stroked the skin alongside the neat line of sutures. She leaned close enough for Lyra to catch the scent of her hair.

“Thank you, Charlie.”

“I’m glad that I could help you.”

Lyra realized with a rush that she also wanted to make some part of Charlotte’s life better. In this moment of clarity, she realized it was just that simple: making Charlotte happy. She leaned closer and said, “Can I do anything for you? To make things easier or better or… Just anything.”

When Charlotte lifted her face slightly, the soft look in her eyes drew the breath from Lyra’s lungs. The quality of her caress on Lyra’s hand changed. “You already did...by knocking on my door and inviting yourself into my life.”

 _What damned fool,_ Lyra wondered, _wouldn’t follow this woman to the ends of the earth?_

They were close, and some part of Lyra was conscious that Pan and Laine were in gentle embrace, and all she wanted was to kiss this woman. Charlotte shifted closer, and Lyra tiled her face in silent permission. 

But then Charlotte stood in a rush and walked around the table to stand at the counter of the kitchen.

Lyra, Pan, and Laine all woke from their trance. Stung and abruptly humiliated, Lyra turned a look to Charlotte’s stiff back, and knowing nothing at all to say in this situation, retreated upstairs. She wasn’t big enough to pretend she hadn’t been pricked by that rebuff. _Hypocrite_ , she scolded herself as she washed her face. _You were just thinking all you wanted was to make her happy_.

Well, happy didn’t include kisses, apparently. Then she gave herself another shake because that was far too melodramatic for her liking. Pan had no words for her. He touched her hand with his paw, and Lyra collapsed onto her bed with a dramatic sigh.

“She’s gone.”

“I know,” Lyra replied under the crook of her elbow. She retreated downstairs to replace her splint and decided a nap was about the only thing to do in this situation.

She slept surprisingly well, and after waking, wondered if she’d misread the tension in the room. Perhaps she’d imagined the whole thing. “Am I crazy?” she asked Pan, only to realize she’d startled him awake. “Sorry.”

He stretched his entire impressively slinky length out in the biggest stretch known to pine martens around the world, squeaking with the effort. Then he yawned just as wide. Pan clearly was in no state to give her wisdom in this interpersonal matter; she was filled with affection for him.

For the first time in months, Lyra looked at herself in the mirror. She studied her hair, lightened to nearly gold in the sunlight of Ecuator, long enough to reach her chin. It was once again a thick, wild frame on her tanned face. Her face had changed in the last year: leaner and sharper and looking far more like Mrs. Coulter than she found comfortable, though her eyes—somewhere between blue and gray—were bright and clear. She had a still unfamiliar scar across her right eyebrow, and when she smiled, her golden tooth flashed. Then her mouth settled into a moue before she made an even ruder face.

Not everyone wanted her. She was used to drawing looks, not that she ever tried, but perhaps knowing people found her attractive though she took no effort with her hair or face was a vanity in itself. Pan had once accused her of thinking the world should be in love with her because she existed. Granted, that had been during the quarreling time, but there was some truth to that stinging accusation. There were many reasons for someone to not find her attractive. She wished Malcolm didn’t, in fact. Why did his attraction annoy her when Charlotte’s lack thereof was crushing?

“Because I’m a fool.”

“You’re not a fool, not about this at least,” Pan said from the bed, his voice rough from sleep. “You like her and want her to like you. Next time don't storm off. Ask her why.”

“That would…” Lyra sighed as she admitted the bare truth. “That would hurt as much as what she did today, if she didn’t want me.”

“Don’t you have pride enough to lose more?” he asked teasingly.

Lyra rolled her eyes at him and flopped onto the bed, sending him rolling onto the floor with a squawk. He fixed her with his best glare, his tail flicking in annoyance, but he gave up the pretense when she grinned at him.

“Food,” Lyra said.

“I’d be more worried if you _didn’t_ want to eat.”

“Yes, yes, you think I’ll be fat.”

They lazed the afternoon away after Lyra filled herself with quinoa and fruit. Despite the awkwardness of that afternoon, Lyra got through a large portion of the book Charlotte lent her. If Charlotte came around, which she didn’t, she would have filled their silences with complaints about the ridiculously written female character that was more a prop than a person.

That night, Charlotte took her guitar outside again. Lyra opened her doors, settled on the balcony, and offered a wave. At least that was returned, but in the darkness, their physical distance seemed insurmountable. 

Pan, now back to form, scolded her mildly when she returned to bed. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“I’m lovesick. Comfort me,” she muttered. “Also, my hand hurts.”

“Take a pain pill and go to sleep.”

* * *

She was surprised that her divination didn’t suffer by the stiff, bulky splint that ran from her forearm to her first knuckles, but her state of mind during the card readings was such that superseded the distraction of the physical. Truly, Lyra was more surprised her divination didn’t suffer because of her distraction about Charlotte.

Even in the softened state of mind, she began to see patterns in the cards. One quiet evening, Lyra found herself walking east again and ducking into the open-air cafe at the outskirts of the city.

Guillermo was there, drinking coffee and reading his paper. This was not the first time she’d found him after their initial meeting. He smiled and waved for Lyra’s usual tea, pushing out her chair with his foot.

They greeted each other, caught up on small bits of silly news, gossiped about Guillermo’s neighbors, and shared a pastry before Lyra got to her main point of business. She withdrew the three cards that had reoccurred in multiple readings: a king on a horse, a bright star, and a tower.

“These are a place,” she said with certainty. “Any idea what place they could be?”

Guillermo studied them for a moment, his brows raised. “There is a folktale of a king leading his people to follow a star.”

“Like the wise men?”

“No, long before the Authority’s religion came to us. The king led his people to a new, fertile land by following the falling star.”

“What city?”

“Quito. The capital.”

Lyra wasn’t surprised there was a specific location, but a jolt of hope swept through her for all the dæmonless souls that passed through this place. “Then there must be a haven near there where dæmons go.”

“I have never heard of such a place.” He hesitated. “But I’ll write to acquaintances in Quito.”

* * *

Things with Charlotte had returned to normal, much to Lyra’s equal relief and vexation. She felt like a child some days, wanting to pout about her unrequited attraction, but more and more, the desire to support Charlotte and make her happy overrode Lyra’s selfish—and in some ways, ego-serving—need for Charlotte to want her back.

They never talked about the almost-kiss, but there were plenty of other things to talk about: Charlotte was well-read. She had an impressive library and curiosity about all manner of subjects. They took to reading books together—fiction, nonfiction, of all genres and subjects. Lyra was fascinated by the few books Charlotte owned about Texas’s war of independence from New Denmark. Though Lyra had gotten over her allergy of reading quickly at St. Sophia’s, she’d never consumed so much literature as she did that winter in Salinas.

Other silly things occupied them. For one, Charlotte borrowed the dusty truck from her clinic several times a week to teach Lyra to drive. Lyra had spent more of her life in balloons than cars; she found working the clutch and sputtering through a few quiet roundabouts exhilarating.

Charlotte accompanied Lyra for most of her evenings with the Webers, and Lyra decided there was no one better to be on her team during board games. Charlotte had a mind for strategy, and her knowledge of random information was vast. On the nights of free-for-all games, Charlotte proved to be more than a worthy adversary.

Mrs. Weber called on Lyra sometime in the middle of her healing and thanked her for bringing Charlotte into their circle. “It was the most fun I’ve had in ages watching you and Charlotte fight out for the win last night.”

Lyra was only slightly annoyed at her loss, but she had to concede it had been fun to the bitter end.

“And,” Mrs. Weber continued, “Hans finally has someone else to bore with his interests in dog racing.”

Charlotte _had_ gamely held conversation with Mr. Weber, but she confessed on the walk home she didn’t agree with the practice at all. Lyra remembered the slight wrinkle of Charlotte’s nose during the statement and stifled a smile.

Early one morning, Charlotte drove her up the coast. They spent the morning offshore on a small fishing vessel with one of Charlotte’s medical friends, another doctor named Francisco and his wife. Lyra enjoyed the company, the fishing, and especially how at-ease Charlotte was. She wore her bathing suit and little else and spent as much time reeling in fish as Francisco. Lyra even attempted a few fish; her splint barely hindered her reeling.

In late afternoon, they returned to Francisco’s beachside house. They grilled their catches and enjoyed a late lunch. The concoctions all smelled delicious. Though Charlotte and Evita, Francisco’s wife, refused the shark, Lyra was eager to try it along with all the others.

“You’re brave to eat shark for the first time,” Evita said as she watched Lyra try her first bite.

Lyra ate her second bite, enjoying the gamey flavor. She set aside a portion for Pan, who nibbled at the mix of shark meat and cabbage. She wanted to compare it to the stranger things she’d consumed, and old habits made her hesitate. But these people didn’t know her, and they had no frame of reference. She smiled at Evita. “Not so strange. I once ate raw seal kidney and blubber.”

“Where in the world did you get fresh seal kidney?”

“On Svalbard. A panserbjørn showed me what to eat. The kidney was delicious. Might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Strongest memory, at least.”

“You’ve met an armored bear?” Francisco asked incredulously.

“I even tricked one. But even if you’re not armored, the shark is good.”

Before dusk fell, Lyra and Charlotte packed up their things and got back on the road. Lyra returned to her house sunburned, happy to have made new acquaintances, and pleased that Charlotte had shared that part of her life. It was one of the best days she’d had in years, even if she and Charlotte parted ways with nothing more than a wave.

Lyra still shared Charlotte’s morning workouts, and she learned there was a wave to her routine. Charlotte seemed to have a rhyme and reason to her choices for exercises and weights and repetitions, but they were indecipherable to Lyra. Laine gave some clues though; she paid far more attention on the heaviest days.

On one particular morning, she stood just by the platform, watching Charlotte intently, and seemed to hold her breath as Charlotte took the barbell overhead at a squat and stood beneath it. Everything in her stance, her groan as she lifted the weight, her muscle tone, and her shudder of effort suggested this was no easy feat. Then, after standing, Charlotte dropped the barbell, turned toward her dæmon, and gave a shout of victory.

The thing that shocked Lyra was that Laine stood up on her hind legs, and she and Charlotte hugged hard, cheering happily at each other. When Laine collapsed back down on all fours again, Charlotte patted her gently on the head, raising a puff of chalk. Laine sneezed and laughed.

“Congratulations,” Lyra said in some confusion. She laughed in delight when Charlotte—sweaty, smelly, and very welcome—fell on her to give her a hug too. Lyra felt flushed and warm for hours after that embrace.

Later, Pan said, “I think you’ll want her to lift heavy every day now.”

She didn't bother to deny it. “What in the world was that about?”

“That’s the heaviest she’s snatched ever,” Pan replied. He rolled onto his back on the floor and stretched, muttering, “And you think we never talk to each other.”

“Yes, Pan knows more about Charlie than I do,” she retorted, but she scooped him up to cover his head in kisses for his insolence. He hung limp in her embrace for a moment, feigning irritation, but as soon as she stopped, he slipped around her neck and attended to her book with her.

A few days a week, Charlotte accompanied Lyra on her trips to the market. While Lyra’s purchases were easily swayed by her mood, Charlotte was as strict with her diet as her routine. Eggs, milk, yogurt, nuts, fish, and chicken were her staples, and she purchased them in the same amounts nearly every day. The only changes she made were with her vegetable and fruit choices, which were pragmatically chosen to reflect the freshest and in-season.

She was sweet enough to sit with Lyra while Lyra ate her fish stew breakfast on those shared mornings. Charlotte’s expression mirrored Pan’s after she tentatively tried it for the first time last week. Now she leaned back in her seat, content either in their silence or in Lyra’s chatter.

When they arrived home, Lyra said, “It’s a good thing I like to talk.”

“You certainly know how to fill silences,” she replied not unkindly. “Come around for dinner? I’ll make that dish you liked. The one with the yogurt and chicken.”

“Can’t.” She was regretful of that, remembering the tangy spiciness of the dish and the good company. Guillermo had sent her a note to meet marked as urgent. “I’m meeting a friend in town tonight.”

“Shall I walk you, then? The clinic is on Q, and I planned to go today at some point.”

“It’ll be after dark.”

“Makes no difference to me.”

They met at dusk and began their walk a few kilometers through the crooked streets. They parted ways a few blocks from Guillermo’s cafe, and Lyra spent the next fifteen minutes speaking with him about the state of things.

“I haven’t heard back from all my contacts. One doesn’t know of a place that dæmons may go, but the mountains that surround Quito can hide many little communities. We’ll continue to look.” He hesitated. “Someone has been asking around about a girl with an alethiometer. Of course, none of my allies know of any such person.” He tapped his temple, likely indicating her distinctive hair. “Be careful.”

“Thank you, Guillermo.” His warning bothered her, enough to make her reach for the comforting smooth weight of her little stick in her bag as she walked away. Her hair was tied up in a colorful scarf, but she’d been lax about the hat recently. No more.

Charlotte pushed off the wall from beneath the shadow of a building, but Lyra had seen her bear dæmon long before Charlotte herself.

“Ready?” she asked.

Not two blocks from where they met, two forms materialized from the shadows of the buildings, murmuring words Lyra learned from her travels, not from school. She glanced at Charlotte, who froze. The men both had dog dæmons: a long-haired herding dog and a little terrier.

“The bag. Give me your bag, girl,” one said in Spanish, then French. He wasn’t local, not by his accent, clothing, or features. He gestured with the flick knife in his hand. The other man sneered at Charlotte, who took a step back in response. Laine cowered behind Charlotte, shaking. The second man turned his hungry gaze to Lyra. He loomed over her, resting his hand against the building beside him, his smell and sneer making all the anger inside rise sharp and neat.

“That one’s pretty,” said the one with the knife.

“Think she has a pretty cunt? Let’s find out,” the other man said in French, giving Lyra a long look up and down. He was drunk by his slur and his smell. He reached for her crotch, but she didn’t wait for contact.

“Piss off,” Lyra snarled in French. Then the little stick landed across his knuckles, and he howled as he collapsed over his hand. The second one took a blow to the jaw hard enough to send him flat on the ground, his knife well out of reach before he could lift it. Lyra, shouting nonsensically with her rage, struck the first on the shoulder, then the ribs, sending him scrambling away on his hands and knees.

Pan, all grace despite his ferocity, tore off after the terrier, which shrieked at the feel of his teeth and nails, and they fought in a flurry of fur. The man got to his feet and ran, as did his shrieking dæmon. The other dæmon lay quietly at his human’s feet, offering little resistance as the man groaned and began to regain consciousness.

Lyra slipped her stick into her bag and stepped over him and his dæmon. Pan flowed up onto her shoulder and stayed vigilant as he watched the street behind them.

“Still down,” he said. “Do you think they were sent here?”

“No. I think they were drunk and saw two women and decided we’d be easy.” Lyra glanced at Charlotte, who walked abreast of her silently. “Are you alright?”

“I’m not hurt,” Charlotte said in a surprisingly small voice. Laine was a dark shadow at her feet, her ears laid back and her head hanging low.

“Why do men think they can do that?” she exclaimed in residual anger, blinking the tears that rose in rage, not fear.

“Not all do,” was Charlotte’s quiet reply.

Lyra remembered for the first time in months the sailors that had helped her on the ferry to Flushing. Not all, she reflected. They continued their walk, both quickening their steps when they reached the gate of their community. The nightguard didn’t notice anything amiss. As always, he tipped his hat and let them in, locking up behind them.

Charlotte followed Lyra into her house and sat heavily on her couch. “I’m sorry.”

She started from her own mulling thoughts. “How d’you mean?”

“I froze. I should have helped you, and I just...froze.” Charlie stared at her own hands. Lyra was alarmed to see tears in her eyes. “You’re half my size with one working hand, and you beat them off on your own.”

It did surprise Lyra that Charlotte had been so little help. As Charlotte said, she was big and strong, but well… Now that Lyra considered it, Charlotte was probably more likely to turn the other cheek than throw the first punch. She wasn’t angry or disappointed; it was just another piece of Charlotte’s puzzle.

“You ever been in a fight? I’m not talking about your parents hurting you.”

Charlie shook her head, finally glancing at Lyra.

“No shame in that. I have though. Easier with practice. The way I figure, most people don’t think someone else will actually hurt them. But I’ve seen they will. Makes it easier to hurt them myself.” She tried to push from her memory Bonneville’s look of shock when she’d killed him but felt the unease rise sharply.

Pan immediately murmured, “It’s alright.” Lyra reached for him, stroking to find any wounds. He was missing a tuft of fur along his right shoulder, but the scrape that was there—from teeth, it appeared—was minor. She gave him a look to communicate she was alright, and he returned to the coffee table. Pan groomed himself thoroughly, pleased with himself for chasing off the other man’s larger dæmon. It wasn’t the first time he’d been underestimated. Lyra thought he could have fought off the larger dæmon just as well.

Charlotte remained downcast, and Lyra felt a flash of exasperation. “Charlie, you’re not my protector.”

“No. Apparently you’re mine… Damn. I used to imagine what I’d do in a fight. I thought I’d be decisive and defend myself. Even if we weren’t protecting you, we should have done _something_. Laine is supposed to be big for a reason.”

Laine turned her head away, and Charlotte abruptly got down on the floor and stroked her head, leaning close to murmur in her ear. Lyra gave them privacy, deciding liquor was called for that night. Charlie had a bottle of whiskey on her counter so Lyra bypassed her vodka. She mixed whiskey with bitters and sugar and poured the mix over ice.

As she peeled an orange, she pondered a dæmon that was supposed to be big for a human that had never been in a fight. Now wasn’t the time to ask, and she didn’t need Pan’s quelling stare to know that. Charlotte took the glass with a grateful nod and drank it, still sitting on the floor by her dæmon. Then, propriety be damned, Lyra sat down beside her and pulled Charlotte into a hug. Charlotte's arms tightened around her, and she took two shuddering breaths. They remained in embrace long enough for Lyra's anxiety to drain away.

“Stay here. I have spare pillows around here somewhere.”

“Thanks. I’d like that.”

“Have you eaten?”

Charlotte shook her head. Lyra decided the tuna steak she’d bought that morning would do for them both and set about turning it into something edible. The last of her batch of quinoa would do for a base, and she sliced fresh fruit and sauteed vegetables. Charlotte ate mechanically, but she seemed better for the food and settled into sleep within the hour.

Lyra lay upstairs with Pan and wondered if Charlotte would do if she slipped into her bed. The fantasy continued, drowning out Bonneville’s last moments, before sleep took over.

* * *

They were all in better spirits the next day, deciding to venture down to the public pool. They both lay beneath one of the umbrellas alongside the pool with their drinks, tanning and lazing the day away. Lyra sat by the poolside for a bit for Pan’s benefit, and he flitted about, as graceful in the water as out of it.

Despite what was sure to be both of their worries, they didn’t see either of their attackers that day, and everything was altogether uneventful. Hopefully they were dock workers, moving on to another town soon.

Lyra, bearing in mind all the warnings she’d received to keep a low profile, decided going to the police would be unwise. Her false identity was safe enough, but it was better not to call attention to herself by admitting on public record she’d been threatened at a particular place and time. And, Pan muttered, they might say she was unprovoked.

She wondered if that, indeed, was a mistake when the Webers informed them over dinner that two men had been caught trying to scale the fence into their neighborhood. The night watchman put a call into the police, who had two officers nearby. The men were apprehended, put in jail, and sent out of Ecuator for having no legal papers to be here. 

“Where were they from?” Lyra asked.

“Europe. They claimed they had business from the Magisterium, but of course, the officers laughed them out of the country.” The Webers exchanged looks of concern, knowing at least a small part of why Lyra was here. Charlotte turned a quick look of alarm to Lyra.

“Charlotte knows I’m wanted by the Magisterium,” Lyra told the Webers. “Just not the details.”

“We ran into two men who spoke French that wanted Lyra’s bag.”

“More than that,” Lyra rebutted. “They were drunk, and I knocked them down easily enough. I don’t think they recognized me.” Lyra wondered if Pan would have been recognizable in the poor lighting of that alley. She didn’t think they’d been followed here, but there was always the risk. But, no, they’d been drunk.

“Laine.” Charlotte looked troubled. “Laine is well known, and they could have asked around about a woman with a bear dæmon. Maybe they wanted to see if I knew about you.”

“Well, they won’t be a problem again,” Mrs. Weber said with some bravado. “More wine?”

“None tonight,” Lyra replied.

On the walk through the neighborhood, the silence built between them. Lyra could already see Charlotte’s brewing worry. “They’re gone.”

“I’m too recognizable.”

“Bollocks. Truly. I don’t give a damn. Maybe they were asking around about you because they wanted to get back at the girl that beat them up. We’re already known to be friends. I won’t give you up out of some ridiculous concern about being associated with you.”

Charlotte shoved her hands into her pockets and snorted softly. “I see.”

“If you’re thinking of shutting me out, fuck off. I’ll break down your door if I need to; you know I can.”

To that, Charlotte abruptly laughed. “Alright. I get it. It was a stupid thought.”

“Especially for someone so smart.”

“Did you ever wonder why I train at home now?”

It was a strange enough question to raise Lyra’s attention. Even Pan perked up on her shoulder. “I assumed it was more convenient.”

“My old gymnasium told me they’d received complaints. Because of Laine’s gender. And my own. I could have fought them. They waited for me to pay for the whole year to kick me out. But I didn’t fight. It was just too much effort.”

“Charlie—”

“I won’t push you away, but… You should know that about me.”

“That you’re unfailing polite?”

“That I don’t fight.”

Lyra realized she had no idea what to say to that bleak assertion. She couldn’t say she didn’t care. Charlotte’s acceptance of even that small injustice raised her anger. If it had happened in Oxford, she would have found a way to set it right, but on reflection, Lyra decided Charlotte probably would rather it left alone.

“I don’t want a George, Charlie.”

Tense silence descended for a moment. Then Laine chuckled, and then Charlotte’s mouth widened in a smile. Lyra winced. “You know what I mean.”

“Oddly, I think I do.”

They said goodnight a few moments later, and Lyra worried at that exchange until she decided a glass of wine and a bath was better use of her time. In better spirits after a glass of wine, Lyra reclined in her bath, enjoying the warm water and the scent of the new soap that Charlotte had gifted her. “It’s a rather intimate gift, isn’t it?” she mused.

He swam from one side of the tub to the other, lifting a pile of bubbles on his tail. “Not the way she gave it to you: buying it outright and putting it in your bag.”

“Spoil sport.”

“They’re ashamed.”

Lyra cocked her head. “Of what?”

“Not fighting back. More than Charlotte let on.”

“I told her there’s no reason for it!”

Pan cocked his head this way and that as he considered. “Laine says they have to work things on their own, and there’s another reason why... She told me why Charlotte pulled away before.”

That made Lyra sit up. “What did she say?”

“She’s afraid of our secrets. May hurt her. May’s dæmon pricked and poked and prodded at Laine all the time too. Every little secret was used like a weapon. All of the bad things about Maggie in the book were true about May. She even hit Laine, but they’re too ashamed to put it in the book.”

Laine’s fear the previous night was no longer perplexing. That it had been caused by a woman who claimed to love Charlotte... Lyra was filled with rage so sudden that Pan hissed and the hair went up on his back. “I hate her!”

“Laine says it’s no reason to be angry. Sometimes they’re too even.” His tail thrashed, and he looked discontented too. “May’s daemon is a jay.”

He was surely imagining pinning his pecking head as well. Then they both shook off the hateful turn of their thoughts. “We can be angry on their behalf, at least for a little while. What a monster…” Lyra shook her head. “No wonder she’s scared to be with someone else. After her parents and then May… Why’re my secrets so scary though? They can't think we'll hurt them.”

“No, they know we won’t now. But Charlotte’s afraid of all things you can’t tell her: that you might be married—”

“I told her I haven’t loved anyone but Will—”

“But you don’t have to love someone to be married, and she’s afraid of hurting someone else unknowingly.”

Lyra had to concede that point. Her parents proved love and marriage were very different things, though she was certain she never wanted to experience their brand of love.

“She doesn’t know when we’re leaving either.”

That put a stone of worry in Lyra’s gut. When she’d first arrived, she’d thought constantly of going home. Now… She was comfortable, she realized. “It’s not likely to be for a while. Dame Hannah’s letter last week said there were still things that needed to be done.” She flicked a few bubbles at Pan. “What did you tell her?”

“That you wouldn’t hurt Charlotte or Laine. That our secrets aren’t the bad kind. And that there’s been no word about us going home.”

Lyra leaned back and pondered the implications of that conversation. Pan studied her, his expression impish. He flicked water at her with his tail, and she laughed. “Oh, go on. You’re happy because that means she does want you.”

“It’s a bit more than wanting that I want.” Lyra admitted.

“You’re in love with her!” Pan exclaimed, his tail and ears standing at attention. How could he be surprised, feeling what she did?

“Maybe. Not like with Will, but how could it be? She’s such a different person. What do you think?”

“I just hope you don’t spoil it all.”

Usually, Lyra would sass back at him. Tonight, she leaned her head back and said, “I hope not too.”

* * *

The day that Lyra was entirely free of her splint, Charlotte performed her first physical therapy session. She smoothed her thumb over the healed scars; even the marks of suture had faded in the last week.

“I trust you did the exercises I recommended?”

“Yes. Ow!” Lyra hissed as Charlotte moved her fingers in ways she wasn’t prepared for. It was half an hour of aching pain and stretching before Charlotte relented, looking as pleased as if Lyra had completed a feat of strength.

“Much better than I thought, given all the contracture and scar tissue. I think you’ll get good function back with some hard work and dedication.”

Lyra held her hand out, studied the now straight line of it, and massaged the two scars that ran the length of the back of her hand. She smiled, hopeful that she could make a fist again with practice. “Truly?”

“Mmhm. Now, I promised you the beach.”

Charlotte borrowed the clinic truck again, and they drove to the north shore of Salinas. The fish market Lyra frequented and all the paths she walked were on the other side of the city, where it was all rock and crags. Lyra, who had never had the occasion to visit the renowned beaches of the Mediterranean, looked in wonder at the warm sand and softly breaking waves. It took her back to the world of the _mulefa_ , and she experienced a stinging rush of nostalgia and longing for Will. It was her first unconscious reminder in months, and it passed within seconds.

She used to think of those moments like tides of grief. They started as massive waves that would crash over her, drag her to the ground, and envelope her inside them until she could do nothing but succumb. They’d gradually eased as the years passed, at least until the trying time came, and then they revisited twice as hard as before. Today, she felt just a gentle push at the back of her knees, and the surf of her emotion was warm and soothing.

Lyra soaked up the gentleness of her longing, smiling out towards the open ocean. She sank her toes into the hot sand and laughed when Pan darted into the water. He raced to her, and mischievous little cuss, shook himself hard enough to wet her legs. She gasped at him in faux irritation.

The sun at least gave her an excuse to wrap her hair and wear a floppy hat. She stripped to a bathing suit—something she’d never had the occasion to buy before her stay in Salinas—and Charlotte did the same. She was tan where Lyra was not, clearly coming here as often as she claimed. In fact, she was so practiced, she had a few beach chairs rented within the minute.

Lyra expected that they’d get attention either for Charlotte’s body, her dæmon, or both of their expat looks, but the beach was crowded with families of all kinds, too many for anyone to care that two outsiders were among them. While the crowd made her a little nervous, it also afforded them anonymity. After all, they could well be any other foreign tourist couple.

Charlotte disappeared and returned with icy sweet drinks and a melon. Lyra watched her approach, taking in all parts of her at once with a flush of pleasure. For such a broad woman, she was trim, the muscles of her abdomen in relief. Against all expectations, she was incredibly graceful. She was unique, beautiful, kind, and all the affection in the world didn’t negate that Lyra desired her.

Pan had returned reluctantly to the protection of Lyra’s bag, giving her a lick when she offered him an apologetic murmur. Charlotte, apparently oblivious to Lyra’s thoughts, smiled and replaced her sunglasses after she settled into her chair. They shared a juicy melon, and the icy drink was sweet with coconut water.

The heat and sun and people and waves were all soothing, and Lyra found herself dozing in the humidity, waking only when vendors wandered by ringing their bells, selling wares that ranged from water to jewelry.

She awoke hungry sometime later with a cool towel laid over her. She turned her head and shifted from under it. She removed the hot wrap that she’d tied her hair up in and settled her hat over her head.

“Thank you. I would have burned badly.”

“We should go soon.” Charlie’s expression was unreadable behind her glasses, but her voice was surprisingly gentle. 

“Mm. I’m hungry.”

“All that napping raised your appetite, did it?”

They chose a quiet restaurant several blocks from the beach, sat in the shade of the patio, and decided to share their meals. The fish soup was delicious, its cool temperature a perfect contrast to the heat of the beach that Lyra was still feeling. They scraped the bowl clean—Charlotte liked this version better than the one Lyra ate nearly every morning at the market—before the next dish arrived. The plate was full of fresh slices of pork and fried potato cakes and plantains.

Partway through her serving, Pan slipped up onto Lyra’s shoulder and whispered in her ear. “There’s a man standing across the street watching us. I don’t see his dæmon.”

Lyra turned, saw the man, and wished she’d kept her hair tied up. Her large hat lay in an unoccupied chair, and Pan hadn’t been concealed in her bag. Her appearance and her dæmon’s appearance in this country were a giveaway, especially for someone who had possibly been told to seek her out in times of trouble.

Guillermo’s warning came to mind too, but surely a dæmonless man wouldn’t be contracted by the Magisterium to hunt her down.

At her attention, the man approached, his steps hesitant, especially when a stranger’s dæmon began barking and whining in fear as they walked by. Lyra pushed out the extra chair at their table for him, and he sat in it, looking at her like he couldn’t believe she existed.

He was young and dirty. He had the lean wild look Lyra thought would have been on her face during the more desperate legs of her journey to find Pan. Charlotte took an audible breath of shock, and Laine made a sound very much like a whine. Pan darted close and murmured quietly to Laine until she settled. Charlotte turned from her dæmon to Lyra, who wasn’t sure how to respond.

She turned back to the man. “Eat,” she told him in Spanish.

“Lyra Silvertongue?” he whispered in question.

“Louder, please,” she said sarcastically, but offered a smile, pushing her plate towards him. He hesitated. In Spanish: “For your strength.”

That was all the urging he needed. He fell on the food with fervor. Lyra gathered her courage to look at Charlotte. Charlotte was looking right back at her, her dark features unreadable.

“Will you divine for me?” the man asked.

“What’s your name?”

“Isac.”

“And your dæmon?”

“Silvia.”

“Come with me.” Lyra tied back her hair, replaced her hat, and scooped up her bag, which Pan settled into without a word of protest. Lyra threw enough money on the table to cover their food, and Charlotte hastened to follow.

They were an odd group walking and an even odder one to enter the card café. Laine drew a few surprised looks despite the lackadaisical air of the cafe. The café owner was there that day, and she hastened forward to offer Lyra the quiet corner table. Lyra’s anonymity within the cafe had been a pretense for less than a week. Something about her divination was visibly different to those practiced in the art.

“How did you lose Silvia?” Lyra asked, shuffling her cards as everyone sat. She took a sip of her tea and looked up in appreciation when the café owner offered her a dropper of precious rose oil. She took two drops and rubbed them into her temples.

The man’s words came fast, but Lyra understood enough that his dæmon didn’t approve of his lover. They had many fights about the man before Isac woke up alone. His lover threw him out as soon as he saw he was a _desalmado_.

“I’m sorry.”

“Will I find her again?”

“‘Where’ is the better question. I can ask that for you.”

“Yes. Anything.”

Lyra asked him to cut the deck, and settling into the space of unknowing, she began to deal cards. The star, king, and tower occurred yet again, both with the animal and man journeying towards it. Lyra came out of her trance with the burning need to know _where_. There had to be more information she could give this poor man, who cried at the thought of the journey to Quito, to _that_ unknown.

Lyra glanced at Pan, who was already tugging on the velvet bag that contained the alethiometer. So they were united in this decision then.

She withdrew the alethiometer and ignored Charlotte and Isac’s startled gasps. Lyra took another sip of her tea, drew her dim lamp closer, and adjusted the hands as she framed her question, indicating the bird with two hands and the hourglass with the third.

When she clicked them into place, she fell.

Losing focus on the long hand was the hardest part of the process. She had to trust her ability to see the meaning despite not writing down each symbol indicated or counting each pass. Lyra hadn’t pulled out the alethiometer since she’d come to this little town in the Andean Nations, but this time was as close to her readings as a child as she'd ever gotten.

There was no sickness, only the sensation of floating or perhaps falling endlessly. Lyra returned to the table with a startling jolt, like she had fallen into her seat from a great height. She replaced the alethiometer into her bag and looked up.

“The place is northeast of Quito, deserted. The town name, I think it means ‘nothing’ or ‘none’ or ‘zero’. Your dæmon is there, Isac.” She looked up at him, reached into her pocket, and removed a slip of paper to write down Guillermo’s information. “This man is a friend. Go to him tonight, and he’ll help you.”

“Thank you. Thank you!”

“Good luck.”

He hesitated. “Did it hurt you when he left? I dreamed of agony but I didn’t wake for it somehow.”

“The first time hurt, and I left _him_ behind. The second time only hurt after I realized he was gone.”

Pan looked at her, and she sensed his regret and felt her own too. Isac took a shuffling step backward, clutching the paper she gave him, and finally turned to leave.

“Staying?” the café owner asked.

Lyra shook her head. “Thank you.”

She wasn’t sure what to expect, but Charlotte walked alongside her in the coming darkness without obvious anger or hurt. But then again, Charlotte’s silences could be hard to read. Abruptly, Lyra remembered how they’d gotten to the beach that morning. “The truck!” she exclaimed.

She didn’t anticipate Charlotte’s laugh. “I’ll get it tomorrow. Closer to walk home now than to go back and get it.”

Well, at least that was a normal exchange. By the time they entered their gated neighborhood, Charlotte’s long silence had raised Lyra’s unease again. She didn’t give Charlotte the option of retreating; she followed her into her home.

Charlotte poured them both water and calmly sat in a chair on her patio. She withdrew her guitar and strummed a few off-tune chords. Lyra considered the water in her glass and looked to Pan, who looked back in trust.

“My name is Lyra Silvertongue, but I was born Lyra Belacqua, illegitimate daughter to Lord Asriel Belacqua and Marisa Coulter. I grew up in Jordan College, in Oxford, and I was safe there until I was twelve.”

Charlotte’s tuning turned the chords to a more pleasant sound, and she strummed a soft, repeating, soothing song as Lyra’s words continued and she explained as much as she could of that strange part of her life.

If Charlotte was attentive, she hid that behind her music, strumming a continuous murmur. For the first time in her life, Lyra was able to lay all her truths out from start to end, not just separating from Pan and losing Will but beyond that: her studies at St. Sophia’s, her depression, losing Pan all over again, and the strange, terrifying journey she took to the rose garden in the desert, the celestial beings that lay in wait there, and, as seemed to be her talent, all the chaos that erupted in her wake.

When she finally trailed off, Charlotte continued strumming. “There’s still a bounty?”

“Things aren’t quite safe for me legally, but Dr. Polstead says he’s hopeful within the year.”

“Not Malcolm?”

“It’s still strange to call him that.” Lyra shifted as Charlotte’s dark eyes took her in, and she remembered how she’d described her thoughts about Malcolm in those dark weeks traveling alone through the continent. “I don’t love him, Charlie. It was fate, twisting me to think I was being drawn this way and that. I’m sick of fate, sick of being dictated to. I just want my life back. I want to trust my dreams again.”

Then, exhausted emotionally, Lyra dashed her tears away. Charlotte set aside her guitar, striking it against the ground with a startling tanging noise. Her weight on the couch tumbled Lyra against her; Charlotte folded her close in her arms. Her warm touch broke the dam of Lyra’s emotions, and she let go, letting her grief, joy, and terror all come out at once.

Charlotte brushed her hair back and murmured against her temple until Lyra was left bleary but calm. She followed Charlotte to her bed upstairs. There, with Pan’s warm fur against her cheek and Charlotte’s scent—rose and vanilla—surrounding her, she slept well.

* * *

The gray of early morning and soft whistling of birds outside awoke her. Lyra rolled over before memories of the last day and night came back. She sat up, took a moment to study her stiff hand and its two new scar and the neat bedroom around her. There were two paintings on the walls, a few photographs on the dresser, and a chair with a few pieces of dirty clothing. A book was propped on the table beside the bed. It was all so familiar though Lyra had never been privy to this room before.

Lyra climbed out of bed without waking Pan. Charlotte was dressed and awake downstairs, and she seemed surprised to see Lyra before she settled again.

“Good morning,” Lyra said shyly.

“Good morning. Is Pan still asleep?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry, it’s strange to see you without him. I believed you, but…”

“Can I be dreadfully rude and help myself to your coffee?”

“It’s a nice change for you to ask for permission to be rude. But please, be rude.” Charlotte’s smile was too gentle for the tease to be anything but affectionate, and Lyra replied in kind.

The task was harder now that the support of the splint was gone, but she was able to deliver a cup of fresh coffee to Charlotte and then herself. Not rude if she served Charlotte first, right? Lyra settled on the sofa beside Charlotte with her cup.

“Thank you.”

“Mi casa es su casa,” Charlotte replied, her tone light. 

Lyra pushed aside her newspaper and made sure she had all of Charlotte’s attention. “Thank you for last night. All of it.”

Charlotte took a long breath, her gaze open with vulnerability. Her smile was almost sad. “Thank you, for trusting me with your truth.”

The moment quivered between them. Then Charlotte turned back to her coffee, Laine hit the coffee table on her way to the cool tile floor of the kitchen, and everything settled into normalcy. Lyra decided to leave it alone. She leaned back in her seat and kept a light tone as she asked, “Questions?”

“Yes. After we work on your hand. Finish your coffee.”

Eventually she gave her hand up to Charlotte’s unapologetic grip. Lyra swore more today than she did the day before, which seemed to help. By the time they finished, Pan was downstairs in a sunny patch beside Laine. They were tucked close, talking softly.

After Charlotte settled into her second cup of coffee, she asked, “Where did your alethiometer come from?”

“Stolen over and over again until the headmaster at Jordan received it. And he gave it to me. Dame Hannah, my mentor, reckons that makes it mine.”

“I thought it took decades of study to read it. You said when Pantalaimon settled you lost the ability.”

“I’m not nearly as good as I was, but I’ve been studying. The card divination must have helped with the new method—it was easier yesterday, but before when I tried, I’d get violently ill. Motion sick.”

“That’s… That Bonneville man, his method, right?”

“Mine is better,” she said not without pride. “But I did adapt it from his method. There are limitations. Would you like to see it?”

“Later.” Charlotte waved her off, and Lyra sat back down on the couch, feeling suddenly shy.

She’d never had to initiate physical intimacy. She simply followed Dick’s lead, and with Will… Well, it didn’t really count in terms of who started what, did it? They were both so young and naïve. Lyra wondered how she could suggest what she wanted to this enigmatic, supportive woman and felt a moment of despair that she never would work up the nerve.

Lyra raised her gaze to Charlotte, and Charlotte went wide-eyed before she touched Lyra’s neck. Still, Charlotte seemed caught in an agonizing moment of hesitation. Looking into Charlotte's eyes, Lyra decided she was a fool; it was a lot easier than she’d been making it out to be.

“Kiss me, you idiot,” Lyra commanded impatiently.

As if that was all she really needed, Charlotte finally did.

There was no question now, not with this kiss. Charlotte wanted her too. Their kiss was soft, full, and all consuming in a way she hadn’t felt in so long. They kissed like there was nothing else in the world they wanted more, even when Charlotte pulled Lyra to lie atop her. The only thing that stopped them was when Lyra put weight on her left hand and yelped in pain, rolling off it.

Charlotte immediately sat up, taking Lyra’s hand and smoothing the aching tissue with between her fingers. Then she drew Lyra’s hand to her mouth to kiss it gently. “It’s not the bone, just the tendons. Not used to the stretching.”

“I’m sorry,” Lyra giggled, resting her face against Charlotte’s neck.

Charlotte mirrored her laugh with a smile. “Don’t be. We should probably eat soon.”

“I need a good wash.” Lyra considered the food she had in her cooler and said, “Would you come over for dinner, Charlie?”

“Yes, Lyra.”

They kissed against the front door, though Lyra was reluctant to get too engaged now that she realized how long it had been since her last bath. Her hair was sure to be a disaster, and sand clung to places it shouldn’t. She probably smelled from the heat of the day before. Pan clambered onto her shoulder and tucked his head into her hair as they walked away. Lyra could sense his happiness and felt her own.

“You do like her,” Lyra accused him.

“She’s good for you.”

“You think?”

“You told her the truth. About everything.”

“Do you think she believed? Not just that I believe but that it happened.”

“She trusts you.”

“But she doesn’t trust my truth,” Lyra guessed with the bitter sting of disappointment. 

“It’s not that simple. She and Laine talked a long time last night about it,” Pan argued. In that moment, Lyra remembered her own disbelief of what she’d experienced firsthand and told herself to be patient. Pan continued, “Lyra, she loves you.”

Lyra’s heart stutter-stepped, and she couldn’t stop her grin, both at the truth and that she was happy about it. There was no fear of suffocation, no skittering need to run, nothing but joy and anticipation for whatever future they might have. Charlotte’s belief in her truth...well, that could come later, couldn’t it?

* * *

Charlotte brought a picture with her that night, offering it to Lyra, who stared at the clean shaven young man in the photograph in perplexity. It was labeled as the graduating class of the Medical College of Baton Rouge, dated eight years prior.

“That’s just not you.”

“It is.” Charlotte’s tone was of rare consternation, her brows drawn together in a surprisingly fearsome line. It was one of the many moments that Lyra found her supremely attractive.

“Oh, I know it’s you, but it isn’t _you_.” Lyra gestured to Charlotte, who wore a loose dress that showed the strength of her legs and shoulders at once. Her hair was down that night, falling comfortably past her shoulders in a sweep of glossy blackness. “You’re so...female.”

Charlotte kissed her lightly. “Thank you,” she said against Lyra’s lips. Then she pulled away to sit at the table.

“Tease,” Lyra accused, adding a flounce to her step as she dropped the food onto the table.

Of all the places the conversation could go during dinner, she didn’t expect Charlotte to ask, “If the Magisterium's lost so much of its power, why are you not safe in Europe?”

“Well, for one, no one knows where Delamare is. Another is that the Magisterium is still in so much disarray that open warrants and bounties just aren’t being rescinded. The CCD is one of the arms still functional, unfortunately.” Lyra wished Dame Hannah could write in more detail safely, but they couldn’t risk much in their letters.

“How could they still be operational at all? The Magisterium was paying the men from the mountains to murder not only the rose growers but also the President of the High Council of the Magisterium and the entirety of that council. Surely that reflects on the church as much as it does Delamare?”

“It does in the east. But the outrage is lagging in Brytain. Sidgwick was in line with them too, and they’re still powerful in Europe, even with the public against them. They may fall to economics—their financial loss has been crippling—but that will take a bit more time. Malcolm—Dr. Polstead—and Dame Hannah are working their magic to make sure it’s safe before I go back.”

“Aren’t they in danger too?”

“They have resources that I don’t. Delamare removed me from Jordan College and destroyed my financial independence. He tried to hurt my guardians.” Lyra sipped her wine and felt herself smile as a memory came to her. “But maybe not the birds.”

“The birds?”

“I didn’t tell you about the witch, did I?”

To that, Charlotte’s smile bloomed, full of curiosity. Even if she didn’t believe, she seemed to appreciate Lyra’s knack for storytelling. Lyra settled in to her story with relish, happy when Charlotte interjected to point out she’d heard about Makepeace before. “Right! Well, the witch was his lover, see, and their son had died in the war fighting for Lord Asriel against The Authority. She decided to kill me for that.”

“Seems to me that the moral of all your stories is never to bed down with a witch.”

Lyra laughed and exchanged a look with her dæmon. “But the birds saved us. Still don’t know why, but everything has a reason, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe Oxford is the safest place for you after all. I can see in the very least that it’s your home.”

Charlotte was right; the story had awakened her homesickness something fierce. “Well, they say it isn’t safe yet. So I’ll be a good girl and wait for their signal that it’s safe to come out of hiding.”

That provoked a laugh of pure disbelief. “A good girl? I bet they asked you to have your groceries delivered so you don’t have to leave your house at all. And here you are, giving your name freely to help people who are dæmonless.”

“I’m disinclined to be idle.”

“Oh, I figured that out a long time ago.”

A rush of heat flushed her as Lyra interpreted that tone as something else altogether. She took one last sip of her wine before rising to take Charlotte’s hand. Charlotte looked at her almost fearfully before her expression settled into naked want. She followed Lyra without protest as they walked upstairs to Lyra’s tiny bedroom.

Feeling hot and confident, Lyra stripped out of her dress. She was naked underneath, and that fact earned a low noise from Charlotte. Nothing felt better than her hands sliding across Lyra’s bare skin. Her mouth was comfort and sin, leaving Lyra gasping in her arms.

“Are you sure?” she asked, her mouth hovering so teasingly over Lyra’s mouth.

Lyra answered with a kiss. Charlotte brushed Lyra’s nose with her own and kissed her again with a much different intent. There were more words, whispered commands and questions, all rising to a crescendo of gasping pleasure and love, trust, and safety. For all the pleasure, Lyra anticipated sleeping against Charlotte’s warm body as much as she did the sex.

* * *

The beach drew them back again now that the weather had cooled beautifully in the winter season. They took time to go several times a week if only for a few hours at a time. Though Lyra had been told to avoid the crowds, she talked down Charlotte’s concerns and coaxed her out during a local festival to celebrate the patron saint of the region. Lyra’s compromise was to avoid the evening celebration. 

“For all that Salinas is a sleepy beach town, travelers tend to make the week a wild one,” Charlotte warned.

“What better way to celebrate a man whose guts were ripped out than to drink and party for a week.”

“He was beheaded actually.”

“Does that make a difference?”

To that, Charlotte laughed. “Probably to him!”

The afternoon was busy with a crush of crowds, but Lyra managed to find an empty patch of sand just large enough for their towels. They settled between two families with several children. The older children’s dæmons flitted about, trying to annoy or entice Pan into play, though they didn’t dare with Laine. Pan remained suitably unimpressed, curled up in the shade of the umbrella Charlotte rented.

Lyra watched greedily as the parents of the children interacted with them with such affection. One mother sat in a warm tide pool with her baby between her legs and laughed and kissed and snuggled with the child as he slapped the water with shrieks of laughter.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Mm…” Lyra stirred on her towel and glanced over at Charlotte, who was watching that same family wistfully.

“Maybe your mother did love you, Lyra.”

It was so unexpected—and so in line with Lyra’s thoughts—that she barked out an incredulous laugh. “What a strange thing _to_ think.”

“Is it?”

“All those terrible things she did to me… And you know about them!”

“She saved you from intercision, didn’t she? She protected you from the Magisterium, in her own way. And you said the...the angel told you about Metatron.” Charlotte hurried on before Lyra could interject. “Maybe her love conflicted with all those other things she considered necessary, and at the worst, you won out over all the rest.”

“That’s not love. Love is selfless and good, and loving someone means that you’d rather hurt yourself than hurt them. Right? You and May… I know you loved her because of all you did for her, but I don’t know that she loved you for all she took from you. Same with my mother.”

“Maybe that’s what love should be, but people are all different. You are not your mother.”

“Thank God for that.”

“I’m serious. You’re two different people, and while she wasn’t good, you certainly are. You’re good and selfless and kind and generous so that’s the way your love is. If you had to hurt yourself to save the person you love, you would without hesitation. You already have. For Will. And he did it for you.”

That gave Lyra a start because she hadn’t been thinking of Will at all during the conversation. What a curious thing, one that she’d turn over in her head multiple times. She still loved Will and would never stop, but there were so many new things layered over her love for him that it didn’t ring the loudest anymore. She wondered if she would feel guilt, but looking at Charlotte now, she realized it was never a betrayal to find love with someone else.

Charlotte judged her expression, her brow furrowed in worry. “Sorry. Don’t know why I brought it up.”

“Were you thinking of your mother?”

“No, actually. I just… I’ve been turning over your mother’s character in my mind for a while. What her motivations may have been. How much you may resemble her—or not,” she said quickly. 

“Well, stop,” Lyra groused. “I’m the one you should be turning over in your head.”

Charlotte’s gaze swept from Lyra’s eyes to her toes and back again. Her face was motionless but for that, but Lyra could read her desires like a book. She wondered if she might suggest they go home; Charlotte would be certain to take her up on that offer. Instead, Lyra decided good came from anticipation.

There was plenty of good food to enjoy, and the parade of costumed figures would be the highlight of their day.

* * *

Guillermo looked at Lyra with some impatience when she sat by him in his café. “I’ve been wanting to see you for some time.”

Lyra considered what had kept her busy and blushed despite herself. The note he’d sent her had gone unnoticed for two days. She’d practically lived in Charlotte’s house—and bed, she was not ashamed to admit—the last few weeks. Guillermo raised an eyebrow and then rolled his eyes. “Ah to be young again and enthralled in lust. Such stamina.”

She had to accept his teasing because it was more than true. Her relationship with Dick had been educational and fun, but Charlotte was something else altogether. Passionate affairs were so much more consuming with someone you felt passionately for. Of course, there was plenty more than sex that occupied them.

Another fishing trip, more than a few morning workouts, shared books, and a day trip to a neighboring city to visit the renowned chapel named after the local patron saint. Lyra had been delighted to see the small dome uncovered during the Intercessor’s sermon—well, he was called a Administer here—spinning its little sails as sunlight caught it. She knew a little of the physics behind the contraption now, but it didn’t stop her nostalgic memory of the first time she’d seen it with the Librarian of Jordan College.

Now, Lyra offered Guillermo an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

After a moment, Guillermo leaned back, his smile creasing his face and said, “The town you described to the last traveler was Nono. Deserted some years ago after the opium trade and local militia met in a gunfight that killed most of the inhabitants. It was so long ago that it took me some time to remember where I’d heard the name of the town. And there it is.”

She felt a tremble of excitement. “Did they find their dæmons?”

“That is up to them. But, Lyra, even if your information is false, you and your dæmon’s presence is hope to them that they can reunite with their dæmon just as you were.”

“I was helped so many times on my trip across the continent that… Seems I should try to help back. I hope it is a real place. It seemed so clear with the alethiometer.”

“Be careful, girl. Someone wants to know where you are. Even a card cafe in Salinas doesn’t promise anonymity. Some people there would be glad enough to give you up for a coin.”

It sounded like something Malcolm might say, but Lyra took Guillermo’s warning with only a tingle of irritation and far more gratitude. “You’re right. I’ll be more careful.”

* * *

Lyra awoke snuggled against Charlotte’s back. Pan was a warm bundle of fur against her neck, and even Laine managed to fit herself across the foot of the bed. Lyra let the love fold over her and soothe her back to sleep.

When she awoke the second time, Laine and Charlotte were gone. She brushed a hand across the sheets, which she found cool to the touch. Footsteps sounded, and Lyra turned over to watch Charlotte lean against the doorframe of her bedroom.

Lyra had a little thrill; Charlotte was wearing the colorful silk robe that revealed the body beneath. Though she had little in the way of hips or breasts, everything about her screamed female. The robe was short, showing the majority of her strong legs, and the strong line of her chest was visible above the knot. Lyra leaned back into the pillows and sighed.

“What?” Charlotte asked, bemused.

“You. You’re beautiful.”

She blushed and winced. “You’re only saying that because I made coffee.”

“While you may feel differently, I don’t like coffee nearly as much as I like you. Come here.”

Charlotte crossed the room and sank down onto the bed to accept Lyra’s kiss. She didn’t protest—instead watched with anticipation as Lyra tugged at the knot holding her robe closed and pushed one side over her strong hip. Lyra thumbed the muscle that swept over her hipbone, then met Charlotte’s gaze as she leaned forward to take her breast in her mouth.

Sometime later, Charlotte said, “The coffee’s probably cold.”

“Don’t care,” Lyra muttered against her neck. “Just heat it up again.”

“Blasphemy.” Charlotte kissed her neck. “I have to travel tomorrow. Francisco asked me to help with a surgery in San Pablo. I don’t expect to be back until the morning after. The roads can be rough in the dark.”

“Whatever will I do without you?” Lyra asked, but a small part of her wasn’t joking. She stretched and proclaimed, “Masturbate, I suppose.”

That earned a delighted laugh. “Just try to stay out of trouble, my dear.”

* * *

The following day was quiet. Lyra didn’t miss Charlotte, or so she told herself. It was good to be alone sometimes. She could focus her attentions on Pan and the housekeeping chores she’d put off for the last weeks. 

She took a long walk along the north shore that day, enjoying the crowds of travelers experiencing the sandy beaches. The Webers happily invited her for lunch, and then Mr. Weber took Lyra through the golf course again. Some of her classmates enjoyed the sport, and while Lyra would never think it anything but dull, the walking and conversation were pleasant.

Halfway through their abbreviated game, he said, “You care about this far less than our board games, my dear.”

Lyra had gained a reputation among her limited social circle in Salinas for being a cut-throat at the board games. Now, she winced. “Well… I like being outside and walking.”

Mr. Weber gave a good-natured laugh. “One might say that’s the majority of the game.”

By the time evening rolled around, Lyra was content with herself. She read while she ate leftovers from lunch. She was tempted by wine but decided it wasn’t a necessity. She’d had three glasses that week and would have to open another bottle anyway.

“Bath?” Pan asked.

“Yes.” 

They enjoyed the soak and climbed out more than ready for sleep. Lyra slept naked, enjoying the feel of the cool sheets on her skin. Pan stretched the length of her back and occasionally, as if reminding himself of her, snuggled closer.

A good day, she thought as she felt sleep hovering at the edges of her consciousness. But tomorrow would be better; Charlotte would be back.

* * *

Lyra awoke with a gasp. Pan whispered urgently in her ear, “Someone’s outside.”

His tone negated any possibility it was Charlotte slipping over too late. Outside her bedroom window, a white owl dæmon perched on her veranda, her yellow eyes flashing eerily in the darkness. Lyra reached for the little stick that perched beside her bed, fear thumping hard in her eardrums. The weight of the stick was a steady comfort. She pulled on Charlotte’s discarded silk robe and walked downstairs. The dæmon had seen her. There was no use in trying to sneak.

“Go next door, Pan. See if she’s here. If she isn’t, get the Webers.”

He looked like he would protest, but after only a moment, he was out the window, sprinting through the dense brush that separated their houses. Lyra prayed the owl outside wouldn’t catch him on his way into the window. But, no, the owl flew back to her human’s shoulder, and her gaze was fixated on Lyra as she walked outside.

There was no point to waiting inside, praying he wouldn’t break in. The house had enough glass that he could enter without a problem. And if Lyra ran, he probably would too. She was ready to be done with this man forever.

Despite how closely woven their tales were, she’d never seen Delamare in the flesh before. Her first impression was disappointment. She’d imagined him as a male version of her mother, but he had none of her beauty or presence. He was small, gray-haired, and impeccably groomed. The whites of his eyes flashed as he showed her the pistol in his hand. Even with the pistol, he didn’t invite fear at first glance.

“Lyra Belacqua.” He swayed, and even the darkness, she sensed his lust, though she couldn’t guess if it was for her blood or her body.

“Marcel Delamare, I take it?”

“I waited a week for you to be alone. I’m not surprised you bedded down in _sin._ ” He spat out the last word.

Lyra was beyond being cowed about such trivial things, but her anger rose at the realization he’d been watching her for so long. Her skin crawled at the thought of what he’d seen. “What do you want?”

“Come with me, Lyra. It’s time to set you on the right path.” He raised his weapon, vague in its direction, before the muzzle dipped again. Lyra had the leap of hope that he wasn’t here to kill her. If she could distract him, keep him talking…

“Thanks, but I’d rather stay here on my present path, inversion and all.”

“I said _come with me_!” The shout startled her, and she finally saw a resemblance between this impeccable man and Mrs. Coulter. His rage was just as unpredictable. And, just like his sister, he took a quelling breath and calmed himself. “You and I… We need to set things right. We need—”

“Marcel,” his dæmon said urgently. “Where is her dæmon?”

His eyes darted in the darkness, and his expression twisted in a look that took Lyra back to those long, isolated weeks traveling through the continent. “Abomination! Where is he?!”

“Ran away again. He hates me, hates my abominable ways.”

Marcel looked ready to shoot her, but his gun remained dipped. Lyra was past fearing death, not when anger raced hot through her veins. Just a step closer, and she’d beat him with her little stick. “Why are you here?!”

“You killed my sister. You destroyed my Magisterium—”

Lyra interjected, “You did that! Killing all those people to snuff out rose trade—”

“It had to be done. The rose oil had to be controlled, this nonsense about seeing Dust... Sin has to be controlled for the clarity of the church!”

“Dust isn’t sin; it’s love!”

The gun came up again, and Lyra flinched despite herself. “Don’t blaspheme to me!”

“Blaspheme?!” She snarled back, her anger overriding her caution completely. She wished she was close enough to give him a good strike with her little stick, which quivered in hand. “You hypocrite! How many people have you killed on your holy journey?! And for what?”

“For the longevity of the church—”

“For your aspirations!”

“How dare you!”

“The Authority is dead, and you know it. And your sister had a hand in that! Your church is founded on a lie—“

“Heretic!” His teeth were bared, and his entire body shook.

“They wanted to lure me in, to kill the origin of all sin, and you did your damnedest to help them. But that was their final bid, and they failed, and the entire universe, all its parallel worlds, are bathed in Dust! In love and joy and thinking and consciousness!”

“You’re insane. I thought I could help you—”

“I’m _right!_ You can hide behind your rhetoric and your Bible, but the truth will be out, and the Magisterium will collapse. It’s already happened—“

She dropped to the ground as his pistol fired. Something hot snapped by her face, and Lyra’s emotions escaped in a scream of rage. Marcel stared at her in horror; it was as if he hadn’t intended to pull the trigger.

Then she saw it: a shadowed figure slipped across the shared yard, and Lyra twitched in sudden fear. Marcel might not kill her, but he would kill Charlotte. Why had she brought Charlotte into this?!

His dæmon saw Charlotte and gave a cry of alarm, rising from his shoulder with a few beats of her wings.

“Lyra!”

It was Pan, climbing up her body, careless with his claws, but she knew they had to distract Delamare. Lyra rose from her squat just as Pan braced on her shoulder, and as one, they pushed. Pan’s aim was perfect, and he caught the snowy owl dæmon with his claws and teeth, tearing at her wing.

Delamare’s attention was divided. He had turned away from Lyra, and his head jerked around to his dæmon, who cried, “Shoot the bear!”

Laine was running full tilt across the yard, and some small part of Lyra saw Charlotte jerk as Laine pulled at their bond, but her mind was on the immediate terror of Delamare raising his gun. Lyra’s little stick came down on the arm holding his pistol. The crack of his pistol shocked her, as did the crack of his forearm snapping under the power of her strike. The second blow missed his face and hit his shoulder, but the pistol was in the grass. He yelped when Lyra struck him twice across the back as he scrambled for the gun. 

Then Lyra gasped, gut clenched and icy agony tearing through her. Marcel’s dæmon had got her claws in Pan, even as she struggled to get back in the air with her wing injured. Pan twisted and writhed, shrieking and chattering, and he fought back ferociously, tearing at the owl’s talons and underbelly. Fur and feathers flew everywhere. Marcel gasped and staggered, whirling on Lyra again with his teeth bared in rage or pain.

Laine’s roar of rage overlapped with the gun retort. The noise rang in Lyra’s ears, and she felt as though she’d been struck in the leg by an immeasurable force. Without her consent, her legs went out under her, and warm stickiness soaked her thigh. Pan’s shriek rose high, but Lyra was focused on figuring out what had just happened.

The pain was delayed, but when it arrived, it blanked all thought. She couldn’t get her leg under her again, no matter how hard she tried. Lyra pressed her hand to the source of her agony, and her palm came away sticky, wet, and warm.

Then Delamare loomed over her, drawing her attention back to him. Her stick was out of reach, but—

Something immeasurably powerful hit him too, and he was flung headlong into the grass. His dæmon dropped like a rock to the grass, and Laine’s black silhouette loomed on the owl. Lyra turned her head to see Charlotte just behind her daemon. Her foot struck Delamare, and even in her gasping pain, Lyra heard the air leave his chest. Then Charlotte landed on his chest with her knees, raising something heavy overhead, and brought it down on his face decisively, striking well past the hands he raised in defense. Once, twice…

At the same time, Laine’s great jaws clenched down around the yellow-eyed owl.

It was hard to say who killed Delamare, because Laine shook the owl like a rag just as Delamare’s face collapsed into itself.

Then Pan’s warm body crawled up into her arms, and Lyra held him close, trying to concentrate on anything but the lightning pain that radiated up her thigh. “Lyra, stay here. Stay with me, please,” he begged. He gave cried in time with each pulse of fire.

Charlotte loomed over her, her silhouette dark against the bright moon. She touched Lyra frantically. “Where were you shot?”

Oh, she’d been shot? Wordlessly, Lyra lifted her palm to show the blood on it, but Charlotte’s hand was there, raising a flare of agony. Lyra thought she screamed but felt too faint to be sure.

“I’m going to lift you up.” Charlotte did just that, unsympathetic in the face of Lyra’s agony. She strode into the house and set Lyra down gently.

“Not here!” Lyra gasped, beyond logical thought, but Charlotte ignored her. Pan lay close and whispered, “The blood doesn’t matter. It’s fine, Lyra. Stay here.” Charlotte turned on the anbaric light and collapsed on her knees to look at Lyra’s thigh. The blood ran thick and hot across both her legs now.

Charlotte tore open the pantry closet and rifled through the supplies there. She tore off her shirt, wrapped it around Lyra’s leg, and wrapped utility tape around it. The pressure she applied was agonizing, but she didn’t stop, even when Lyra struck her across the shoulders and screamed. Dark speckled her sight, and she vomited in a rush of nausea.

The front door opened with a bang. Both the Webers stood there. Lyra couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes, but Charlotte gasped out a cry. “He’s dead. Who was it, Lyra?”

“Delamare,” she said, her teeth chattering. “My fucking uncle.”

“Shit.” Charlotte abruptly looked shaken. “I just killed the President of the Magisterium.” Then, just as quickly, she focused. “I’ll bring the truck around. We need to get you to San Pablo.”

“It would be better if you could treat her here,” Mr. Weber said.

“I need to be sure she’s stable—” 

Mr. Weber pulled Charlotte aside forcibly, and they spoke in hushed, angry voices at each other for a moment. They seemed to reach a decision, and Charlotte stepped away. No one but Lyra seemed to realize she and Charlotte were both half-naked. 

“Give me a moment,” she said, and ran out the door with Laine on her heels.

“What happened, Lyra?” Mrs. Weber asked, stroking her hair from her forehead tenderly.

Despite her pain and the shock that made her teeth chatter and her heart race, she explained what had happened. By the time she’d finished, Charlotte was back. She’d washed herself, put on smocks, and had a firm, professional look on her face. She took a few readings with her stethoscope and sphygmometer before carrying Lyra out to her truck.

She wished she could say she was brave, but Lyra cried and moaned the entire trip. It was just a bullet to the leg, but she’d never experienced this kind of concentrated physical pain in her entire life.

When they finally arrived at her little clinic in Salinas, two men were waiting inside. They immediately set Lyra into the x-particle machine for a few exposures and placed an IV catheter, and Charlie, with sweat beaded on her brow, asked Lyra if she would consent to a surgical procedure.

She was never fully asleep for it, only given something to make her drowsy and relieve some pain. Charlotte put a needle in her back, and everything finally went lovely and numb from the waist down. She could think again, even with her mind foggy from the sedative. Mrs. Weber, who stayed to keep her company while Charlotte worked behind the tall drape, later told her that Lyra talked non-stop during the surgery.

“About what?”

“Death and harpies,” was the answer, supplied with a curious look.

Lyra remembered very little of the night before when she awoke painful and stiff the next morning. Pan lay curled up against her neck, and he stirred when she did. As soon as he fully awoke, he launched himself at her cheeks, his lithe, strong body stroking her cheeks and neck in joy.

“What happened to us?” she asked him, petting his back. He had two great gashes down his sides, but they were healing well already.

“Delamare shot you.”

“I know _that_ , stupid.” Lyra’s voice was slow and tired, and she felt as though she’d been run over by an armored bear. “Where are we?”

“At Charlotte’s clinic. In Salinas.”

“Hello, Mira.” A man stepped around the cloth curtains that shielded her bed from the rest of the room. Lyra recognized him even though he was in smocks instead of swimming trunks.

“Francisco. Why are you here?”

“Charlotte asked me here. Are you hungry?”

“Painful.” She had a sudden flash of terror and pushed at the sheet over her leg. First she felt horror: her entire leg was bruised and swollen horribly. The bullet wound was oddly small. Later, she would realize the wound just above the back of her knee was significantly larger. But it was still there, despite how vague her body felt in the moment, and she released a breath of relief. “And not hungry.”

“Well, let me take a quick look at you. Then we’ll see if we can put something in that belly.”

He completed his physical examination despite Lyra’s poor cooperation. He fiddled with her leg, which protested horribly. When he was done, she turned away and may have slept for a little bit because she started to find Francisco near her head. “At least drink a little juice. You need sugar.”

“Where’s Charlie?”

“Police,” he said with a wince. “Wouldn’t leave you until I arrived from San Pablo. I’m useful until she returns, at least.”

“What'd you mean?”

“Charlie is a good friend, but Dr. Sutherland is a bit territorial about her cases.” His smile tense. “Only the best for her patients, and when she thinks she’s the best, well, God help all the rest of us. And God help me if you don’t drink some juice.”

She had mercy on him. Even the watered-down version of juice he gave her was a delicious burst of flavor on her tongue.

* * *

Mrs. Weber and Charlotte were both there when Lyra awoke next. The small window across the clinic showed it was nightfall. Lyra felt all kinds of turned around about time and place, and Pan had to remind her again of where they were.

Mrs. Weber sat up from the seat beside Lyra’s bed. “How’re you, dear?”

“Could be worse,” Lyra replied. She wiped at her eyes and felt a little ill. When she looked up, Charlotte sank down into the seat beside Lyra’s bed, her eyes were red-rimmed and the shadows below them drawn. She felt relief and reached out to take Charlotte’s hand clumsily.

“Charlie?”

Charlotte just looked at her, her dark eyes communicating a melange of emotions Lyra was too fuzzy to work out. Then, with a sudden rush of energy, Charlotte was up again, murmuring instructions to Lyra as she took a few readings.

When Charlotte fiddled with her leg, Lyra groaned in pain. The burning question rose: “Will I recover?”

“Yes. It’ll take time, but I’m sure you’ll be running again.”

Lyra’s breath caught as her relief swept through her. “How long?”

“A few months if you’re lucky. A year if not. But you’re young and strong and determined. And most important, you’re not a stranger to pain.”

“What happened?”

“You were damn lucky,” Charlotte replied wearily. “Bullet didn’t strike your bone or sever an artery. The angle was...miraculous. I just had to clean up a few small bleeds, debride the rest, and close the wound.”

“What did the police want?” Pan asked impatiently.

“The usual things,” Charlotte replied, glancing at Mrs. Weber. “With someone shot and another dead, the police like to know who did what.”

“They don’t know the identity of the man that attacked you,” Mrs. Weber said from Lyra’s other side. “My dear, are you quite awake?”

“Yes,” Lyra said, shifting to find a less painful position and paying her warden mind.

“We’ve all decided that the truth is best, excepting Delamare’s identity.”

Lyra glanced around in alarm, but Charlotte said, “We’re the only ones here.”

The problem with lying with other people, the lie couldn’t be off the cuff. Lyra had never been good at this sort of lying, but she hadn’t tried her skills in a while. “So who is he?”

“No idea,” Mrs. Weber answered lightly. “Maybe a seasonal worker, one with a bird dæmon. What could he want with you, I wonder?”

Though she was painful and sleepy, Lyra replied with her most wide-eyed and innocent looks. “What if he meant to rape me?”

Both Mrs. Weber and Charlotte stared at her in shock. “Too much?”

“Perfectly too much. Have you done this before?”

“I perfected the look as a child. How do you know they won’t be able to identify him?”

Charlotte stood up and walked away without a word. Mrs. Weber watched her go and turned back to Lyra, lowering her voice. “Not much left of his head, and his fingerprints are matched to a fake identity. We’ve got a few friends in the police too. They know not to look too hard into it.”

For the first time, Lyra realized what Charlotte and her dæmon had done for her and Pan. “Is she in trouble?”

“I doubt it, though no one’s said anything officially. They’re waiting to talk to you before closing the investigation. As soon as you’re moved back home, they’ll come asking.”

“I can talk to them now.”

“No.” Charlotte was back again, a tray of food in hand. “This place is for healing, not for police interrogations. You worry about yourself first, then think about what you’ll say to the police. Mrs. Weber, I appreciate your help, but you should go home.”

Mrs. Weber’s dæmon fluttered on her shoulder, but the woman hid her emotions admirably. She rose, pressed a kiss to Lyra’s forehead, and said she’d by again in the morning.

“When did you last sleep?”

“Two days,” Charlotte replied, sinking down into her chair again. She gazed at the floor, her expression bleak and unhappy. “I’m having my assistants and Francisco check my doses.”

“You need to rest.”

“I can’t seem to.”

“But—”

“Lyra, please. Worry about yourself, not me. Now, I need you to try to eat.”

Dutifully, Lyra did as commanded, and by the time Charlotte encouraged her to sleep, there was no way to fight the exhaustion that sank over her. When she awoke, Francisco had taken Charlotte’s place, and Charlotte lay asleep on the cot across the room.

Between naps the following day, Lyra decided healing was damn boring. It was high time she wrote to Malcolm and Dame Hannah, even if the Webers already had. Francisco supplied Lyra with paper and pencil, and she considered how to word the damn thing as she sipped rapidly cooling tea. She hurt, but she’d rather the pain than the fog of opiates.

Pan was no help. He looked back at her just as blankly. They spoke quietly to each other, aware of the potential for eavesdroppers.

“How secret do you think we need to be?”

“Is there a way to say, ‘Delamare's dead’ in code?”

“I suppose I could write it like a submission for a short story. Just…not quite the same details. Like Charlie did for her book. And at the end say something about my uncle serving as a starring role. What do you think?”

His tail flicked as he pondered the situation. “Use an anagram.”

“Mm, yes. Even better.”

It was a fun little ditty, made little sense under scrupulous attention, and it read like a comedy drama. Pan would tap on her wrist and supply a suggestion, then laugh when Lyra concocted it with her own flare.

“Lyra?”

She looked up and smiled at Charlotte, who had stirred on the cot just a few minutes before. Her hair was down, and she looked rumpled and exhausted but not nearly so drawn as the night before. She stepped into Lyra’s little corner of the clinic and pulled the curtains closed to give them the illusion of privacy.

“How’s your pain?”

“Manageable,” Lyra replied. The leg ached a deep pulsing pain, but she could continue a little longer without more medication in just the right position. Moving though... “It’s boring healing, did anyone tell you? Anyway, I’m trying to figure out how to get news to, well, home. Pan and I were writing a story of it. What else can I do but laugh at the damn bastard?”

A flicker of a smile passed across Charlotte’s face. Lyra met her gaze and wished she could take it all away. “I was lucky you came back early. But maybe _you_ weren’t.”

“That...implies I’d rather you die than to kill him.”

“It was him or me. Thank you for choosing me. Both of you.”

“That was never a choice. I was so afraid then so angry he would dare threaten you, that he’d hurt Pan. I didn’t think until it was all done. It’s just… After last time… I never knew I was capable of that. That Laine was capable. She touched him.” Charlotte pressed her hand against Laine’s head gently, and the bear made a soft chuffing noise.

“I understand why. Don’t be ashamed of that.”

“We aren’t… Of that, at least.”

“What have you got to be ashamed about?”

“I was too slow. He shot you.” Charlotte’s voice tightened as her emotion surged.

Lyra frowned at Charlotte. The protest was too stupid to form a rebuttal for immediately. Was it some sort of twisted ego that drove Charlotte to seek perfection in herself only? Charlotte drew up and then exhaled as she judged Lyra’s emotion. “I just wish I could have taken that bullet for you.”

“Well, that’s stupid. I wouldn’t have been able to fix you the way you fixed me.” Lyra leaned back in the bed, tried to hide her wince, and shrugged. “Seems to me everything worked out the way it should’ve. Everything has a meaning, a reason, right? My entire life, I always seem to find the people I need when I need them.”

Charlotte’s smile was slow and sad. Laine put a great paw on her leg, and Charlotte gave a subtle head shake in reply.

“You didn’t shoot me, Charlie. He did. Don’t you dare give him the credit of feeling guilty about what he did.”

“Sometimes you make a lot of sense, Lyra.”

“Sometimes you’re incredibly silly.”

To that, Charlotte smiled again. Laine turned her attention to Pan and asked, “How are you?”

“Almost healed. Humans are a lot slower,” he said smugly, stretching to snuggle against Laine’s great snout. 

It made sense upon reflection, the unflinching choice the bear dæmon had made. If Laine had assumed her form in part to protect her human, then Lyra could understand that touching another human to defend her own wasn’t unthinkable to her or to Charlotte. They’d probably thought it multiple times.

“Thank you, Charlotte. And thank you, Marjolaine. However you see your role in it, thank you for protecting us.” Lyra held out her hand—an offering, not a question or request. She wouldn’t be offended or upset if Laine refused. Disappointed...yes.

Laine glanced at Charlotte for a brief moment before she stepped into the touch. Lyra swallowed heavily as her hand slipped through the coarse fur between Laine’s ears. She stroked gently down between her eyes and against her muzzle. Next to Lyra, Charlotte shuddered. Laine exhaled a long breath and leaned her weight into Charlotte as Lyra’s hand fell from her fur.

“Sometimes touch can be good,” Lyra said softly. “I promise, I won’t ever hurt you.”

Lyra took Charlotte’s hand when it was given, lacing their fingers together. Charlotte carefully rested her head next to Lyra’s hip. It took a moment for their emotions to settle.

“Shall I read my story to you? The princess kills the evil sorcerer who was secretly her uncle with the help of a witch from the north, but I’m only halfway through. I’m stealing some credit, you see.”

Charlotte smiled tearfully. “You’ve given it away!”

“I suppose. Worth a read anyway though.”

* * *

Charlotte reluctantly released Lyra from the clinic two days later. It took all of two hours before the police called on her, but it was enough time for a bath and tea.

Lyra received them while she sat on her new couch—by courtesy of Mrs. Weber, no doubt—her injured leg propped onto the soft pillows. The police apologized and asked after her health, and Lyra wove the tale as if it had never been anything but the truth. To what the man could have wanted, well… Lyra gave a hushed answer with her most innocent of looks, and both officers apologized again for refreshing what must be terrible memories for her.

The next few days were long stretches of sleep and boredom.

Lyra drew Charlotte in to help her with her ridiculous letter, which became more about exorcising Delamare’s demon from her life than relaying the truth about his demise. A little under a week after that horrible night, the letter to Dame Hannah was in the post with Charlotte’s blessing of approval and very little editing. She said, “I’m honestly not sure I can help with that hilarious mess.”

Lyra decided to take that as a compliment.

For their part, Laine and Charlotte were always within reach, yet emotionally out of reach. It was as if they’d first met all over again; they were ruled by Charlotte’s silences. At her last resort, Lyra coaxed Charlotte to share her bed, and though it took a little negotiation, they lay in each others arms again for the first time since the attack. Lyra felt Charlotte relax by degrees.

“Are you alright?”

“The police came by today.” Charlotte seemed oddly neutral about that fact, and that neutrality continued when she said, “They wanted to let me know they won’t press charges based on our stories and the fact Delamare’s fingerprints were the only ones on his gun. He had gunpowder on his hand as well. His prints didn’t match anyone in the system here, but they presume he was a seasonal worker. They said I was clearly within the law, protecting myself and my neighbor.”

“You don’t seem to know how to feel about that.”

“No, I’m relieved.” Charlotte stretched her long legs out, and her arm came around Lyra’s waist. Lyra caught her hand and threaded their fingers together, squeezing gently.

“You don’t sound it.”

“I don’t regret what I did, but I think that’s my issue. Not that I killed him but that I don’t regret it. I took an oath to do no harm.” She squeezed Lyra’s waist gently to ward off her interruption. “I know the particulars don’t cover killing someone to protect another person, and I don’t regret my action… It just seems to me I should feel some kind of guilt or horror. I know it doesn’t make sense. I just… need time.”

Lyra sensed she shouldn’t even try to puzzle this dilemma out. “Should you write about it?”

“I may. Right now, I feel content not to. But I have given writing some thought. Writing with you.”

“What do _I_ have to write about?”

Somehow Charlotte’s silence was dubious. Lyra considered and, in the darkness, colored. “Really?”

“The harpies need a story, don’t they? Even if no one believes, they will when they find themselves in the land of the dead. And then they’ll have all the stories we can give them.”

“You believe me,” Lyra replied, shaken by the trust in Charlotte’s declaration. “But how would we write it?”

“A recorder, a typewriter, and lots of patience. But later. Concentrate on—”

“Healing, I know.”

* * *

The pain in her leg was similar to that of her hand: it took time to fade, and then it eased into just uncomfortable stiffness. 

Within three weeks, Lyra was using a cane to make her way to the market. Charlotte, of course, wrote an exercise plan for her leg. It was so much slower getting around than she was used to, but Lyra found it in herself to enjoy the quiet walk. She decided to treat it like her old runs: more about the experience than the destination.

She decided to treat her relationship with Charlotte the same way. Instead of barreling in and demanding things return to what they were before, Lyra let Charlotte dictate their pace. She told herself to enjoy the slow return to their intimacy: both emotionally and physically, and used every moment to learn as much as she could about Charlotte.

That first day to the market and back, Lyra enjoyed herself thoroughly. She lost track of time in conversation with an elderly woman and her marmoset dæmon that reminded her so of Dame Hannah and returned to her neighborhood later than expected. 

Instead of returning home, she knocked on Charlotte’s door. She’d tired herself out remarkably but was giddy for the ability to move around again, even if it left her feeling the short walk from Charlotte’s house to her own was insurmountable. And she had a gift.

Charlotte led her to the kitchen and poured Lyra some tea. She stretched out her legs and smiled across the table at Lyra, her dark features happy for the first time in a long time. Lyra, who knew those legs intimately now, could trace the line of muscles of her strong thighs beneath her thin linen pants. She touched Charlotte’s calf with her toe, more to gain her attention than to titillate.

“How are you?”

“Happy.” Those dark eyes were light with that truth. “Happy to be with you. What adventure did you have this morning?”

“Fish stew and conversation. And...” Lyra removed a silk robe from her bag, spreading it out on Charlotte’s table. “Since I bloodied up the last one.”

Charlotte stroked the cloth, her smile slightly more subdued. “Thank you. I know better than to leave it with you again.”

Lyra was pleased that Charlotte could joke about it. She slipped her fingertips between Charlotte’s, glad to see Charlotte’s smile widen again. Then Charlotte looked her up and down in an entirely different way. She patted her lap. “Tell me more about what you did this morning.”

Lyra took a moment to understand the command and carefully sat on Charlotte’s legs. Her thigh ached, but she rested most of her weight on the uninjured one, negotiating a comfortable position without difficulty. She sighed as Charlotte’s lips traced a path from her ear to her collarbone. “Practicing my Spanish language skills. It’s all in the tongue, Spanish.”

“Oh? Learn anything new?” Charlotte replied, her gaze intent and easy to interpret. Lyra smiled as she bent closer for a kiss, but her words were completely serious. “Take me to bed.”

* * *

Past Dame Hannah’s letter that communicated her relief that Lyra wasn’t more badly hurt in Delamare’s attempt on her life—to which Charlotte’s expression turned thunderous and Lyra, who by now knew she could have easily lost her leg, had to remind her that Lyra herself wrote the letter—Lyra didn’t hear word from her contacts in Brytain for over a month. She put it from her mind, feeling relief for not having that threat hanging over her anymore. 

She and Charlotte spent their time at the beach, in each other’s homes, and sampling the local fare for the best food in Salinas. Lyra divined for three more dæmonless individuals, one of which she did not point north to the capital.

In those quiet weeks following Delamare’s attack, Charlotte and Lyra tentatively began the story of Dust. Lyra, who was sure she had forgotten most of what had happened, was surprised by how Charlotte drew out the details of her memory. She never laughed at Lyra’s sometimes childish descriptions, and whatever uncomfortable comparison Lyra made, Charlotte managed to put it to words in a much richer way.

There was little structure to start, but bits and pieces they stitched together: descriptions, outlines, and discussion about events and people and places. Charlotte was keen on the Magisterium’s movements, but Lyra was largely ignorant of them. They wrote a list of questions that grew longer by the day of things they didn’t know but would like to.

“This will take years,” Charlotte said one evening with Lyra cradled in her arms, her right hand making notes on the desk by their shared chair.

“Oh, I know. Lifelong task,” Lyra murmured sleepily. “Building the Kingdom of Heaven. Happily ever after.”

She barely perceived Charlotte’s kiss to her temple before she faded into sleep.


	3. Happiness

The knock on her front door raised Lyra’s hopes for her morning. Charlotte had said she would be in the clinic all morning, but perhaps her plans had changed. Lyra was more than happy to entertain her with silly anecdotes again, or if Charlotte was thus inclined, spend a few hours in bed. 

Instead of Charlotte’s dark features and slow smile, it was Malcolm’s stocky frame, flushed cheeks, and red-blonde hair in her doorframe.

Her expression seemed to frighten him. He drew back immediately and appeared apologetic, flushing bright red in his emotion. “I’m sorry. I thought I should come in person.” He tried for a smile. “Everything’s in place for you to return home.”

Lyra took him in again and released a long sigh. “No, I’m sorry. You just weren’t who I was expecting. Welcome, Malcolm. Come inside, please. Hello, Asta. Did you come by sea or air?”

“Air. A bit faster even with the refueling stations along the way.”

He followed her several paces behind and took a seat at her little kitchen table. His brow furrowed to see her cane and limp, but Lyra pointedly ignored his unvoiced question. She poured him some of the coffee she’d been nursing over breakfast and excused herself to change. She expected Pan to remain downstairs in conversation with Asta, but he followed her into her small bedroom. 

“I was rude,” she told him.

“Yes, but we weren’t expecting him,” Pan replied. “Lyra, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t even been thinking… I thought we would get a letter and have time to…” To what? Plan how to say good-bye and go? Though she did have the matter of Guillermo to resolve. And the Webers deserved more than a little thanks. And Charlotte…

The thought twisted her with agony, and Lyra had to sit on the edge of her bed as panic rose. She exchanged a helpless look with Pan, who gave a soft chirrup of distress. “What can we tell her?”

“Ask her to come with us!”

Could she be so bold? They’d only just started their affair, and Charlotte had uprooted her life already for a woman with disastrous results. Could Lyra be so selfish to ask that of her all over again? Worse still, would Charlotte reject her?

“At least let her know we want her to. You love her, Lyra. Tell her that!”

He was right. The fact there was a possibility of a future had to trounce any selfish fears of rejection. Lyra took a fortifying breath and pulled on a clean dress, shaking her hair and deciding a brush was more effort than it was worth. She tromped downstairs and took a seat at the table before standing again. “Can I get you breakfast?”

“A bit of whatever you’re having if there’s enough.”

She could feel Malcolm’s gaze on her as she sliced fruit and peeled a few boiled eggs. “You’ve done a few things to the house.”

Lyra looked around at the peeling paint and bare walls, and her long dubious look back at Malcolm made him laugh. “I meant the fruit basket.”

“It’s a gift.” Lyra brushed her fingertips over the sample of treats she’d bought Charlotte and felt her distress keenly. She wanted to go home, yes. She missed Oxford fiercely, but she knew she would miss Charlotte just as much if she left. The dilemma was different than it had been with Will. She suspected it was less about the depth of emotion and more about an adult perspective.

“Are you alright?”

She sank into her seat and studied Malcolm for a moment. He looked downtrodden and a little afraid of her answer. Lyra didn’t want to blame the messenger, but… “Why didn’t you send a letter?”

“I thought you would rather I came with the letter. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you wouldn’t want me to come. Lyra, I’m not… This isn’t… Of course I’ll stay with the Webers—”

“It isn’t _you_. But I have things I need to prepare before I can leave. I’d expected more forewarning.”

To that he looked surprised, a faint flush coloring his cheeks. Instead of expressing dubiousness at her having anything else to do here, he accepted her statement calmly. “Of course. How long do you need? The term starts in two weeks. We’ll need a week for travel.”

“I don’t know how much time I need. At least a week.” Lyra shook her head. “I don’t care about the start of the term. A few days makes no difference, does it? Dame Hannah can set things right either way, surely.”

Now Malcolm just looked embarrassed. “Of course not. Lyra, I’m sorry. I never intended to cause agitation.” He sighed and glanced at his dæmon. “I rushed in, thinking I was saving you from drudgery.”

His obvious self-deprecation put her at ease enough to smile. “It’s far more interesting here than that.”

“That must mean you haven’t been following our advice to lay low. Hence Delamare found you.”

“How did he get here?”

“He had the same idea we did and was living in the capital in secret. We found out too late to warn you.”

Lyra nodded, remembering his short letter to the effect, one that arrived three days after Delamare’s death. She’d read it in the clinic and had Mrs. Weber burn it for her immediately after.

“Any idea how he got word of you from Quito?”

Pan made a quiet noise, and Lyra had the same thought: worry for the people she’d been helping. Hopefully the information had been passed around not out of duress but in honest oversight or a mistake. She couldn’t imagine having caused harm to someone just because they’d known her name.

Malcolm waited patiently, but by his expression, he’d read her and Pan’s reaction.

“There’s a network, probably everywhere, to help people who are without their dæmons. I offered my services to this network.”

“And how, pray tell, did you do that?”

“I divined.”

“Dame Hannah and I both told you the alethiometer is dangerous to use right now.”

“I didn’t use the alethiometer.” Lyra pointedly ignored the time that she _did_. “I used cards. I know you don’t believe in them, but they guided these people to the next place in their journey. Dust works through the cards as well as the alethiometer. Malcolm, there’s a place like the Blue Hotel here. I discovered it with my divination. It’s a town called Nono, just northeast of Quito.”

Malcolm gaped at her. “You gave your name to these people and directed them north to Quito.”

“They already knew who I was. Apparently I’m known by at least one person in Spain who wrote to a dæmonless person here.” 

Malcolm took a long breath. Lyra wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him so angry. She remained unmoved. “What did you think I would do while I was here? Sit in my house and wait for rescue? I’m no helpless damsel.”

His jaw clenched. Then he seemed to release all his anger with a sigh. “What happened with Delamare? Your story was a little hard to follow.”

“But it was funny.”

“Lyra,” he chided.

“He’d been watching me and came a night I was alone. He had a gun. We fought, him and me and Pan and his dæmon. He shot me, and maybe he’d have won, but Charlie, her dæmon knocked him down, and she killed him.”

Malcolm’s lips parted, but he seemed to take his first question back. Instead, he asked, “Who is Charlie?”

“My neighbor. And a great deal more, I dare say.” She said the last bit to herself.

A knock sounded on the door, and Lyra smiled, her dilemma at the forefront of her mind again. “And that’s her.”

“Hello, dear,” Charlotte said lightly as she stepped by Lyra at the door. She leaned close to kiss Lyra’s neck, as was her habit. “I wondered what your plans were this afternoon. The beach will be crowded, but the weather’s nice and it may be worth braving the crowds.”

“I have company. Malcolm’s here.”

Charlotte’s expression settled into her frustrating unreadability. She hesitated, but Lyra took her hand. “Come, meet him.”

Malcolm hid his reaction to Laine fairly well, but his curiosity about Charlotte couldn’t be hidden. If he’d seen the intimate kiss, he didn’t let on about it. He took her hand, his assessing gaze quick enough to remain polite, and they shook firmly. “I was picturing a witch with a bird dæmon. I see Lyra embellished that part of her tale.”

“If you gleaned any truth from that silly story, my hat’s off to you. I’m Charlotte Sutherland.”

“Malcolm Polstead.”

Their dæmons spoke politely to each other at the edge of the room, and Pan slipped off Lyra’s shoulder to join them.

Lyra pressed fresh coffee for Charlotte, added a dab of coconut milk, and set her cup in front of her. She needed to talk to Charlotte alone but could think of no way of pushing Malcolm out without being incredibly rude. Where would he go other than to impose on the Webers?

“Is there danger?” Charlotte asked.

“No. That’s why I’m here, in fact. I thought it good news, but Lyra corrected my lack of foresight. I didn’t anticipate that she would need time to put her affairs in order before she returns home.”

“Ah. It’s safe again in Oxford? That _is_ good news, isn’t it?”

The last question was directed at Lyra. Just like that? Lyra wondered. Charlotte lost her smile when she met Lyra’s gaze, and Malcolm abruptly stood and cleared his throat. “Lyra, I know you have things to do. I’ll stay with the Webers while you plan. I’ll call on you tomorrow, if that’s agreeable?”

“Midday, please.”

“Of course.”

He left quickly. In the silence of his exit, Lyra and Charlotte studied each other wordlessly. Lyra hated how hard it was to read Charlotte in the moment.

“So that’s it,” Charlotte finally said.

“That’s not _it_. You know that.”

It was as if Lyra hadn’t spoken. “I thought we’d have more time, but I always knew you had a life to return to.”

“Come home with me.”

Charlotte’s breath caught, and she even looked to her dæmon. Then she shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”

“Isn’t it? Do you really have a life here? Have you put down roots?”

“I can be me here.”

“You can be yourself in Oxford. I’d never ask you to pretend to be anyone you aren’t. Don’t you know me well enough to know that?”

Charlotte hesitated, but her tone remained defeated. “If I don’t pretend in a place like that, how will we both be received? I couldn’t forgive myself if I became a hardship in your life.”

“Hardship? As long as we’re together, we can sort anything.” Lyra’s desperation rose sharp and ugly. To her anger, tears choked her voice. “Then I’ll stay. There’s enough for me here, and I have my readings—”

“No.” Charlotte took her hands and met Lyra’s tearful gaze, her own voice choked by emotion. “This isn’t your home. It isn’t your life. We both know that. Oxford is yours in more ways that I could ever understand.”

“Charlie, I love you. Surely you know that.”

Charlotte’s expression was fragile, and her voice trembled. “Love doesn’t solve problems.”

“It does!” Lyra limped to the living room and dumped the alethiometer out of her bag, pulling it from its velvet case and lifting it high to shake it. “Love guides this; it gives answers and resolves conflicts. Love _is_ the solution.”

Charlotte approached to take Lyra’s palms in hers, cupping her hands over the alethiometer. “You have so much faith, and I admire that. But…”

“Why does there always have to be a ‘but’?”

“But you’re young, and—”

Lyra pulled away roughly. “I _hate_ that damn excuse! I’m young, but I’ve experienced more than most people in this world, in _all_ the worlds! I know I want to be with you. That’s my truth, and I trust it. I trust you.”

Charlotte looked at Lyra like she was the most incomprehensible thing she’d ever experienced. Her smile was painfully gentle. Her thumb smoothed over Lyra’s cheek. Such a look of naked love shouldn't make Lyra feel so sad. She shook her head. “You were supposed to say you love me too.”

“I do,” Charlotte said softly, leaning close to brush her nose against Lyra’s. “Like you said, surely you know that.”

“Then have the same faith in us and try.”

When Charlotte didn’t return her smile, Lyra felt her last hopes slipping away. She wiped her tears away angrily and rubbed her face. “So what do we do?”

“We enjoy the time we have left.”

The finality in Charlotte’s voice crushed her last hopes. Lyra had lived through this situation already and knew there would never be enough time.

* * *

Guillermo took the news of Lyra’s leaving with some regret. “You’ve been so helpful to us, but I now have a place I can tell our travelers to try. Your help will continue even after you leave.”

“I didn’t expect to leave so quickly.”

“If we don’t meet again, Lyra Silvertongue, it was an honor to meet you.”

“Thank you, Guillermo.” She paused and turned back. “Would you like me to divine for you?”

For a moment, he appeared tempted. Then he smiled wide enough to hide his tears and shook his head. “Sometimes it’s better not to know. Goodbye, Lyra.”

* * *

The Webers were delighted that Lyra would be able to return home, but they did say they’d miss their evening meals. They exclaimed over her gift of wine and chocolate, opening one of the bottles over dinner.

They played a round of their favorite board game, and the only thing that spoiled the evening was that Charlotte wasn’t here. Lyra understood; she couldn’t keep up appearances with so many strangers, even if she’d managed for Lyra and the few times she’d interacted with Malcolm. Lyra wished they’d had another evening with the Webers, just the two of them. It was unfair to resent Malcolm’s presence; she tried her best not to.

After dinner, when Malcolm and Mr. Weber were in heated discussion about dog races, Mrs. Weber hesitantly asked, “Will Charlotte be accompanying you back? I know you two have grown close.”

Had their gossipy neighbor guessed the nature of their attachment? Lyra felt no shame and would have admitted the truth if not for Charlotte’s privacy. Lyra saw nothing but kindness on the woman’s face. “No. I would like… Well, she said it would be impossible.” Lyra took a quick drink of wine before she betrayed any more. She offered a tight smile in the face of Mrs. Weber’s sympathy. “Would you check on her for me? Ask her to dinner once a week? I’m worried she’ll be…” Lyra couldn’t go on.

Mrs. Weber’s smile was gentle. “Yes, of course.”

When Lyra stepped out into the darkness, both of the Webers gave her a hug and asked her to please write. Lyra promised to put them on her calendar once a quarter.

She walked past the few houses that separated her from the Webers and stood outside her door. She gazed at the familiar place and wondered if a part of her would look back on the strange months in Salinas as a happy time.

Happy or not, she wasn’t spending her last night here apart from Charlotte.

Change of clothing in hand, Lyra crossed the lawn that separated their houses and knocked on the pink door. Charlotte opened it almost immediately. She wore her robe, and based on the shape of her body underneath, not much else.

There were no words, not past ‘yes’ and ‘please’ and ‘more’. Much later, when they refused to sleep and waste what time they had together, Lyra reclined in Charlotte’s arms in bed. She attempted to read but focused more on the sensation of lying close to her lover.

Charlotte said nothing about Pan’s proximity. He’d grown more comfortable with physical touch, but tonight, with the slight shift, he wiggled his head beneath Charlotte’s hand. Lyra shivered in keen shivery pleasure as Charlotte’s thumb stroked across Pan’s shoulder, but she pretended to keep her attention on the book in her hands. Gently, Pan shifted his position so that he lay across both their laps.

“Thank you,” Charlotte said softly. After a long moment, she spoke as if continuing a conversation she'd been having in her head; her voice shattered the depth of that shared moment. “I know you think I’m brushing you off, but I did consider it. I considered it a long time before Malcolm came to get you.”

Lyra looked up from her book in surprise, turning her head to take in Charlotte’s expression. She gazed out the open windows, her dark features contemplative. Laine lay on the floor beside them, her fur stirring with every pass of Charlotte’s fingertips.

“My medical license was granted under my male persona so even if I could transfer it, it would be under another person. I might owe my tuition, given I paid my way through school on a male scholarship. You said women are doctors in Texas, and you’re right to a point. The women have to pay their own way so they’re usually from wealthy families. Men can earn scholarships, and one might say their places are subsidized by their female classmates.”

“Do you have enough to pay back your tuition? I can help if you don’t.”

“Thank you, dear.” Charlotte kissed her neck. “I do though. Truthfully, it would probably sting my pride more than my bank account. But I would have to apply for a skilled laborer’s permit in Brytain, and those take months to go through. That’s hoping that a hospital would hire me.”

“Oxford has a medical school.”

“They could hardly want a woman who operated under a license named to another person. But even if I could somehow earn a position at that prestigious school, what about our social standing?”

“I grew up among the servants at Jordan. What do I care about society?”

“Could you be hired one day as a professor if you’re known to have a woman lover? Could I for that matter? What of your friends and acquaintances?”

“If they can’t accept us together, they aren’t friends, and I’d ask them not to be acquaintances.”

“Lyra, I just want you to know that I’ve considered it. And it won’t work.”

Lyra turned back to her book because anything she would say now would be unforgivable. She wished Charlotte hadn’t laid out her arguments so succinctly. She had given all the reasons why it wouldn’t work but hadn’t given merit to all the ways it could.

“You’re angry.”

“You’re pessimistic. I’ll fight for you, Charlie, but you have to fight for me too. All those reasons you listed… There are just as many that it _would_ work.”

“I understand, Lyra Silvertongue. But there aren’t always happily ever afters.”

“There damn well should be. You and I both deserve that.”

It didn’t make Lyra feel any better when Charlotte’s voice went tight with emotion. “It’s like we talked about before. Sometimes love means doing what’s best despite what we want. I believe you would let me be myself, but if I did that, I’d hurt you badly. I couldn’t forgive myself if I did.”

“But it wouldn’t—”

“Lyra, please. Please don’t ask me anymore. I just need you to trust that I do love you, and I want you to be happy.”

Charlotte pressed a soft kiss to her neck and kept her face tucked there, breathing soft and easy. Lyra stroked her forearm underneath the silk robe and determined that her anger shouldn’t get in the way of the precious few days they had left together.

It wasn’t enough damn time. If she had a month or two, maybe she could convince Charlotte. She should have started preparing them both for this possibility months ago. But she couldn’t undo a lifetime of habits and fears in one week. Damn May for etching herself so roughly into Charlotte’s soul. Lyra wished she had more time to smooth away those marks.

* * *

Two days later, Lyra and Malcolm were waiting to board the large airship to take them home in Guayaquil. Charlotte accompanied them to the city for their overnight stay and now, in the early hours of the morning, held Lyra close as they said their goodbyes.

“Write to me. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Charlotte said. She made to let Lyra go, but Lyra had the sudden panic that this would be the last time. She pulled Charlotte close to kiss her, damn anyone who was looking.

Charlotte came willingly into the embrace, then buried her face in Lyra’s hair. “Be well. Enjoy your life, Lyra.”

“I’ll visit.”

Charlotte’s tight smile was a little wound. She didn’t believe Lyra. How could Charlotte believe so much that Lyra had told her and not this? Lyra seized her lapels and gave her a little shake. “We will see each other again, you fool. I love you.”

And there it was, the spark of belief. “Yes, we will. I love you, too.”

They kissed again, and Pan and Laine nuzzled each other. Lyra stepped back, feeling as if only seconds later she was sitting in her cabin on the airship with Pan curled up against her neck, watching Ecuator fall away.

* * *

Dame Hannah Relf and Alice Lonsdale waited at Oxford’s aerostation with their dæmons. Lyra threw herself into first Dame Hannah then Alice’s arms in great relief, holding them close, aware that Pan was touching noses with their dæmons.

Asta and Malcolm were slower to disembark. He’d tried to coax her into conversation throughout the long journey, but Lyra was mullish, her anger at Charlotte leaving her in a poor mood to talk with him. Pan was similarly despondent and had little enough to do with Asta. It was unfair to resent Malcolm for not being someone else, but she wasn’t feeling particularly fair.

“We’ll have to apologize,” Pan said on the third night of their travel. Lyra didn’t disagree.

But Hannah and Alice… She finally felt a spark of happiness.

“Oh, Lyra. You look like you’ve been on holiday, not in exile,” Alice exclaimed. She cocked her head curiously. “Is that a gold tooth?”

“I like it,” Lyra sassed, smiling wide.

“A gold tooth and lots of sun,” Dame Hannah said gently. She touched Lyra’s cheek and took her hand, her clever gaze finding the new scars on Lyra’s hand curiously, then studying the cane in her hand. “Are you hungry? You’ll stay with me until we get your room sorted at St. Sophia’s.”

“I can always eat,” Lyra said, turning to offer Pan her hand. He took the short leap to her arm and climbed onto her shoulder, tucking himself into her hair.

Oxford was so little changed outside the car windows that Lyra felt a tingle of rightness. Everything settled at once as an unacknowledged weight slipped off her shoulders, even if it felt like she’d left a bit of herself behind during her journey. She tucked her bag under her arm as she ascended the steps to Dame Hannah’s apartment.

It was strange to be back, as if she’d only dreamed all this before. Lyra set her bag down in the spare bedroom, studied the comfortable bed, and gathered her energy to return downstairs to sup with Dame Hannah, Malcolm, and Alice. She was too tired to give them much detail, but she assured them she was well and glad to be home.

Malcolm offered little in details, but he spoke with Hannah and Alice about the Webers and a few bits of information that Lyra supposed she should know but was too tired to make sense of. Perhaps Pan would let her know later.

It was only after she retired to Dame Hannah’s guest room that she released a melancholy sigh against the pillow. Pan burrowed against her neck, and she took comfort in his warm body as sleep evaded her.

* * *

The next day, Lyra had more energy and thus more enthusiasm. She and Dame Hannah talked a bit about the tedious details of her schooling at St. Sophia’s. She had missed an entire semester and was at this time disinclined to put in more study time to try to catch back up. They gossiped a bit about the professors and staff, but soon enough, they settled into discussing the alethiometer.

“I learned something new.”

“The new method?”

“No, not quite. Have you ever used cards, Dame Hannah?” At Hannah’s questioning look, Lyra removed the precious pack of cards that she stored alongside her alethiometer. She flipped a few at random, setting them alongside each other, but she didn’t reach for the meditative mindset needed for a true reading.

“I’ve seen something similar, but it was at a carnival.” Dame Hannah was dubious, but she wasn’t impolite about it.

“A man gave me these on the train from Smyrna to Seleukeia.”

“Seleukeia?” Dame Hannah gave her a long, fearful look. “It’s a wonder you’re alive. Malcolm said you were wounded when you found each other, but…”

“A group of soldiers decided they wanted more from me on that train than I was willing to give. They beat me, but I gave just as good as I got.”

“Oh, dear child.”

“Someone fixed my hand in Ecuator.” She held it out and let Dame Hannah touch her scars. “She broke the bones again and fixed them in place with little plates and screws.”

Lyra took a long breath and moved on quickly. “But the cards. The man who gave them to me said that Dust guides us in more ways than one. I started using them then, but I divined multiple times in Salinas. They have a café there that serves rose tea and diffuses rose water into the air.” She smiled. “Was it by chance that you sent me to one of the largest exporters of rose in the world?”

“Yes. It was the farthest place with contacts we could trust.”

“The Webers were very kind. They warned me not to nose around about the rose garden in Ecuator, but there’s a place that seasonal workers go and return from, but no one speaks about it. I’m still curious.”

“Perhaps we can do a little reading about it. But Lyra, your cards?”

“The cards, right. They fall how they will. But it takes a state of mind to let them place correctly. I think I did shift the deck sometimes, and sometimes the paths branch if two players move from each other. I practiced that state of mind enough that when I reached for the alethiometer, it was easier. I only used the alethiometer once.”

“I’m more surprised it was just once than you using it at all. How did you frame your question?”

“I…” She looked at Pan. “Dame Hannah, you must know now that Pan and I are separated. I left him behind when I went into the world of the dead—believe me or not—but we did. When I traveled across the continent without him, I’ve never felt so estranged, but I was helped all along the way by kind strangers. There’s a network of help for people who don’t have dæmons all throughout Europe and Asia. I wanted to become part of that network in the Andean Nations.”

“Of course.”

Lyra could scarcely judge Hannah’s expression or the emotion behind those words. She hurried on. “I used the cards, which led me east from the card café, and I met a man who didn’t have a dæmon. I asked him to contact me if anyone needed my help. He had me divine for those who traveled through Salinas. They’re called _desalmado_ there. I kept getting three cards…” She flipped through her deck, and without much thought, the three cards she needed slipped into her hands.

She explained the meaning of the three cards, then why she asked the alethiometer when she did.

“Two hands on the bird? And one on the hourglass?”

“I held the location question in mind, and let go. It used to be sickening, but it’s more like falling now. The gut drop is unpleasant, but you get used to it. I had to let go of trying to track the symbols and passes consciously and like with the cards, the meaning just kind of flowed into me. I fell, kind of like from a great height, and I could see the land and knew what each place was. At the same time, I knew the needle stopped on the sword six times and trembled there on the last pass.”

“What did that mean to you?”

“The place had a negative name, which was Nono. It’s northeast of Quinto.”

“How long did that take?”

Lyra glanced at Pan, who answered Dame Hannah. “Less than five minutes from her fixing the hands to telling him the truth.”

Hannah appeared startled and impressed enough to stoke Lyra’s ego, though she knew the ease of a good alethiometer reader and was still not that. But to read the six passes on the sword in a few minutes… Well, it was closer to what she needed to be. “I haven’t tried again, but the cards’ve helped. And that café was so infused in rose that it was easy to fall into the mindset. I won’t neglect the old way, of course.”

“I would never accuse you of neglecting your studies, Lyra,” Dame Hannah said softly. She stood with more difficulty than Lyra remembered and lifted a glass decanter from the bookshelf. Lyra could count on one hand how many times Dame Hannah offered her liquor by her hearth, and it warmed her that she was invited to share this moment.

“Thank you.”

Dame Hannah paused with her pour, looking up in surprise.

“For guiding me, protecting me, and welcoming me. I spent so long focusing on what I didn’t have that I neglected what I do. And you’re one of those things.”

Hannah blinked rapidly and cleared her throat, approaching to offer Lyra a patterned glass. She tapped her glass to Lyra’s with a wordless smile, her expression conveying all she didn’t say.

After Lyra had gotten halfway through the warming drink, Hannah said, “Tell me about this Charlotte.”

“Has Malcolm...Dr. Polstead said anything?”

“Dr. Polstead says very little about you these days. I wonder at that, but we can discuss it another time.”

“It’s fine. It’s just… I don’t want what he does. Or did. He saved my life, and I’ll never forget that, but… I don’t want to be his whatever. I don’t even know what he wants anymore. It was all twisted up and false anyway.”

“He’s a good man, Lyra.” 

“I’m not saying he isn’t. But he can be a good husband and guardian to someone else. I’d like to be his friend, but everything’s all muddled in the things he wants that I can’t give him.”

“I see.” Hannah looked at her over her glass neutrally. “And this Charlotte?”

“She’s Texan. A surgeon and writer and rather bad guitar player. She’s my…” Lyra realized she’d never characterized what Charlotte was. ‘Lover’ didn’t encompass enough, but ‘friend’ wasn’t enough either. “She’s mine. I’d hoped…”

“Hoped what?”

“That she would come here with me.”

Stated so plainly, Lyra realized her folly. How foolish to hope someone would come across the world to an unfamiliar place just because Lyra asked. They’d been together only weeks, even if their relationship started months prior to that. To hope Charlotte would abandon a life she’d built for herself to build one with Lyra...

“Lyra.” When Hannah caught her attention, she asked, “Is this Charlotte just a friend?”

“No. We were lovers. Or we are. Just apart.” The doubts crept in. “In time, she’ll find someone else. Damn. It’s just like Will all over again. I thought finding someone in this world would be easy enough. What’s sealing up all the cuts between the worlds to any obstacle in the same world?”

“What’s the issue then?”

After a moment, Lyra decided that it was well enough to give up some of Charlotte’s secrets. She’d written a damn book about them after all. She laid out the issues: the living permit, the medical license, and Charlotte’s fear of persecution. Then she carefully brushed on Charlotte’s last relationship. Lyra hoped that Dame Hannah could crush at least some of these fears in the way Lyra could not.

“Being homosexual in Brytain is not nearly so difficult as she assumes. We’re rather well tolerated, women more than men, sadly. Quite a few live openly. Granted, money and status help increase the Magisterium’s tolerance of such couples. Marriage is not yet a possibility, but there are murmurs of hope now that the Magisterium is losing its grip on the government.”

“Oh,” Lyra said, aware that Pan had stilled on her knee.

“And the permit… Well, I’ll have to reach out to some contacts within the medical school.”

“She was known as Charles Sutherland in Texas. She said she was renowned, but I never thought to ask what school she served as a surgeon at.” Then Lyra remembered the class picture and then the name came to mind. “No, I remember. The school was in Hier. But she graduated from Baton Rouge.”

“Did your Charlotte fix your hand?”

“Yes. And my leg.” Lyra opened and closed her fist, smiling. Thinking of all Charlotte had done for her and the emotion in her eyes that last moment together renewed her determination. “I won’t give up. I’ll write to her ‘til she’s right sick of me. And I’ll visit her during break. It’s not such a long trip; we’d get a little over a week together. I’ll just have to work to save up for the tickets during the year.”

“My dear, you’re looking quite like yourself again.”

Lyra looked up, surprised by the emotion that filled pragmatic Dame Hannah’s voice. Her smile was kind, and she reached out to pat Lyra’s hand gently. “Keep your happiness about you. Go to bed, sleep well, and begin all those things that need to be done tomorrow. Including your love letter.”

Strange to be teased in such a way. She wondered later if there was someone to tease Dame Hannah about. Lyra wasn’t sure she would ever be brave enough to ask.

* * *

_I miss you already. Short letter tonight. I’m exhausted from travel. I told Dame Hannah about you and what you are to me. She said homosexuals are tolerated in Brytain. Didn’t bat an eyelash at the thought of us together._

_I’ll visit St. Sophia’s tomorrow, but I must rest. I’m warm from the liquor Dame Hannah shared with me, and her guest bed is so comfortable. Pan sends his love to Laine, and I to you._

_Yours,_ _  
__Lyra_

St. Sophia’s hadn’t changed, not truly. Lyra wasn’t sure why she thought it should have, but even the faculty had only a few new faces. She met with her astonished tutor, Dr. Lieberson, to discuss the classes she could enroll in this semester.

“I’m sorry for the short notice, but I’ve been away until two days ago.”

“Dame Relf gave us more forewarning, and I’ve spoken with the instructors to make sure there was a seat available in the courses you need. There is some difficulty with a few second-semester classes you missed that won’t be offered until spring term, but we can arrange independent study or you can delay. The latter would mean you graduate later. Now, will you have standard credits this semester or extra to make up time?”

She’d worry about the money later, Lyra determined. “I can’t make up a semester, but I would like an extra course in Spanish language. I’ve learned more, and I would like to practice it.”

That earned a raised brow, but Dr. Lieberson promised to ask around. “We should meet in two days’ time. For now, this is your schedule. No one expected you until next week so I would take at least today to get your books and supplies and settle into your room.”

Lyra took the schedule table, the key to her new dorm room, and the list of readings she would need and was out the door again within thirty minutes of arriving. She wasn’t surprised Dr. Lieberson didn’t ask where she’d been, but she was a bit tickled that the pragmatic woman’s curiosity was so obvious.

Lectures had started, but this early into the semester, there was no urgency for perfect attendance. Lyra wasn’t the only student skipping lecture, but she decided to reacquaint herself with her classmates over lunch. For once, the thought of settling back into life at the university was a pleasant one; she had a new appreciation for the mundane.

The most unpleasant surprise of the morning was the scolding the librarian gave her for losing two books from the faculty history section. Her excuse that the books were stolen didn’t sway the librarian, who still remembered the bird incident when Lyra was a student at the boarding school. Lyra promised to save up the money to repay the fine—which was impressive after over half a year of loss—and heaved a sigh on her way out, mourning what free time she might have that would be used to earn wages for that unexpected burden.

“Lyra?!” 

On her way to the dorm, an incredulous gasp made her turn. There was Miriam Jacobs, whose place at St. Sophia’s apparently survived her father’s loss of his livelihood. Though, perhaps his factory had reopened now that the chokehold the Magisterium held on roses was gone. She was surprised at her own happiness to see the other girl and also by Miriam's enthusiastic hug.

“By the Authority! We thought you were dead! Bess was asking about you, and what with Jordan all but sacking their new headmaster and something about a murder you witnessed… Lyra, are you back?!”

“I dare say so,” she said with a laugh. 

Her gold tooth drew a surprised look. Then Miriam took a moment to study her even longer. Pan and her squirrel dæmon, Syriax, were in enthusiastic conversation at their ankles. After all that looking, all Miriam asked was, “What happened to your tooth?”

Lyra laughed. “Broke it in a fight. If you ever need a dentist in Aleppo, I can give you a recommendation. I can’t speak for the doctor that poorly set my hand. But that was fixed a few months ago.”

 _That_ would set tongues wagging. Poor Miriam was sure to not be able to keep that secret, but Lyra didn’t mind. Miriam looked properly taken aback at the moment, then she scrambled to help Lyra with her bags, gathering two of the four to accompany Lyra to her dorm room.

Lyra’s limp drew a few more questions, but Lyra wasn’t quite ready to tackle the topic of being shot. She made a few vague statements, and Miriam seemed to sense her reluctance to broach that topic. They dropped the bags off without lingering, and Miriam nearly dragged her to the cafeteria, where the stewed mutton and porridge was bland and oddly unfamiliar.

An entire table exclaimed to see her, and Lyra let herself be swept into their midst. Lyra received several more exclamations that they were certain she’d died. Several girls asked why she left so suddenly and stayed away so long, and Lyra, in a departure from usual, told the truth in bits and pieces: about a rose distillery, the long desert, a place no dæmons could go, and a place that estranged dæmons _did_ go.

She was surprised at how exhausted the interactions made her. On the way back to the dorm, she told Pan, “We’re not used to so many people.”

He only offered a sigh. He was stretched across her shoulders like a mink shawl, apparently as tired as she was. His yawn triggered hers as she trudged up the steps.

As she shut the door to her room, Lyra took a moment to study it. The room wasn’t the same as she’d occupied before, which wasn’t unexpected given she’d missed a whole term, but the layout, smell, and look of it was so familiar she felt a tinge of unhappiness settle in. 

Pan nuzzled her cheek. Lyra turned to kiss his neck and breathe in the scent of his fur.

“We must always talk to each other if we’re unhappy,” he told her.

“Yes,” she said in total agreement. 

He helped her sort her things as well as his little form could, and soon enough they were ready for bed. It was cooler and drier than they were used to. Hannah’s house was a fair bit warmer than this drafty dorm room, but it was far too early in the season to light a fire. She drew the blankets over her shoulders and lifted the sheet for Pan to crawl in. He lay against her neck, and she murmured in happiness when he pressed a soft lick against her skin. She reached out and stroked him from head to tail.

Then they slept.

* * *

_I’m set up in St. Sophia’s. Met with some old friends, who are happy enough to have me back. I don’t think I told you, but back before Pan left me, two men searched my room for a rucksack I’d found for the murdered botanist. I switched out the contents and put two library books in it. Forgot about it until the librarian today told me off for it. “Welcome back to St. Sophia’s. Glad you’re not dead. You owe a large library fine!”_

_The room makes me afraid I’ll be unhappy again, but I won’t. I’ve learned so much about myself and Pan since then._

_With all my love,_ _  
__-Lyra_

Alice was more than happy to see her, drawing Lyra into another tight, long hug. Lyra melted into her soft embrace. So soon, she was already missing touching another human being. To her credit, Alice’s hugs seemed unrivaled, excepting Ma Costa perhaps. 

When they settled in Alice’s parlor with tea in hand, Lyra opened her bag and handed over a box of chocolates she’d purchased in Salinas. “It’s genuine Andean chocolate. Hopefully not too melted from the heat. It was buried in my luggage or I’d have given it to you earlier.”

Alice set the chocolate aside and took Lyra’s hands in hers. Her gaze was sharp, almost thirsty, as she studied Lyra’s face.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Lyra started and laughed. She didn’t know why she expected anything different, though Alice’s grip on her hands _was_ an altogether new thing. “Why is something the matter?”

“I know you, girl.”

“Malcolm said you were arrested, that the headmaster fired you and Janet.”

“Go check the headmaster’s office. Janet will be there, but he won’t. Greedy bastard. Don’t mind you me; I’m alright. Don’t go throwing guilt at me for something you had no hand in.”

That coaxed a smile. “I met someone in Ecuator.”

Alice leaned back, her brows rising high in surprise and likely anticipation. When Lyra paused, Alice said, “Well, go on then. Don’t leave me in suspense.”

“Alice, if I were to tell you I fell in love with a woman, what would you say?”

Alice’s expression folded into neutrality, and Lyra had the uncomfortable thought that Malcom had already spoken to Alice about Charlotte. Then she gave a tight smile. “I’d say, ‘What’s her name?’, ‘What does she do?’, and ‘Why did she put that expression on your face?’”

Abruptly, Lyra was overwhelmed. She wiped at her tears quickly and sipped her tea, sniffing. Against all odds, Alice teared up too, and she scolded Lyra for starting it. She got up and returned with a handkerchief. “You should have your own,” Alice told her.

“You’re right. I had one before, but it seems to be lost. Or someone nicked it, not that it was worth much.”

“Enough about hankies! Tell me about your woman!”

Laughing, Lyra settled into gossip, glad to see Alice’s look of approval with quite a few of Charlotte’s characteristics. Then Alice said, “Is she your witch? Did she help you kill Delamare?”

“She and her dæmon did. To protect me.”

“Well… Did you run out of things to say with each other?"

"I don't think I will."

Alice's brows swept up in an aggressive line. "That serious? Why the hell didn’t you drag her back here?”

“Charlie thinks we’ll fall apart if she came with me. So she stayed.”

“And that’s what the hell’s the matter with you. I wish I had advice, Lyra. But if you love her, don’t give up. Not without a proper fight.”

Their gossip moved on, Alice filling Lyra in with bits and pieces of Jordan news. Pan spent some time chatting with Alice’s retriever dæmon, Ben, before he returned to Lyra’s lap. When they’d finished the teapot, Lyra got up to clean the dishes. She returned to take her seat, waiting for a cue from Alice that she’d overstayed her welcome.

Instead, Alice offered her a smile, her gaze moving from Pan back to Lyra. “Mended things, have you?”

Lyra exchanged a look with Pan, and they both nodded at the same time.

“Never feels good to be at odds with oneself. Lyra, would you like to have supper with us downstairs?”

A verbal response wasn’t necessary. Alice began to laugh at the look of delight on Lyra’s face. “Everyone missed you, girl. Come on.”

It wasn’t sitting at the headmaster’s table—though the new headmaster would invite her for tea in three days and apologize profusely, offer her all the welcome to sup with him in the scholastic dining hall, and welcome her back to her old rooms again immediately—but she loved the staff at Jordan. There were a few new faces downstairs, but plenty she recognized. Then she gasped when they burst into song welcoming her home.

“What a homecoming,” Lyra told Pan on the way home. She was warm from good food and too much alcohol, happy from the conversation and gossip. He curled up in the hood of her coat that was raised to protect them both from the damp drizzle.

“Suppose they’re right about our place there, that the headmaster intends to apologize and put it to right? I can’t imagine everyone putting up a fuss because of what the last headmaster did to us.”

“And having Alice arrested and Janet sacked. What a right prick.” Lyra sighed. “But we can’t depend on Jordan. We’ll see what happens during the term break.”

* * *

_Have some news but am too tired to write about it now. Taking shifts at a few places around Oxford for the extra funds. Finished my first two weeks of lectures today, and I am properly tired. Will write a letter with more substance soon._

_The leg is holding up well. I’ve retired the cane already._

_Love,_ _  
__Your Lyra_

Lyra was as surprised to see Dick as he was to see her. She’d taken on a few shifts at White Horse in the evenings after class, hopeful that Dr. Lieberson never caught wind of it. It was one thing to have evenings to oneself, but working as a barmaid was sure to be frowned upon. Lyra could squeeze in her studying around her shifts and earn extra money while she could. It was there that she dropped a few pints of beer at one table and turned to find herself face to face with Dick.

He nearly fell off his stool at the bar in his haste to reach for her. Lyra accepted his hug, a little bemused at his tight embrace.

“Lyra, I thought you were dead! No trace of you after all that messy business with the mailman, and I was sure. I tried to go to the police, but they laughed me off. Bollocks, girl.”

“Good to see you too, Dick. Glad to hear everyone in Oxford thought I was dead. You did send me to your grandfather, you remember?”

He hugged her again and released a long breath, giving her a look that reminded Lyra of the times during their brief relationship. Retaking his seat at the bar, he gave her a crooked grin, starting to look like himself again. “Yeah, but he came ‘round back a month later and said you’d gone. And that measly hug’s all I get after all this time?”

“We’ve been over for ages, Dick.”

“But we’re pals.”

“Yeah, we’re pals. What’ll you have?”

“Lyra,” he said. “Come here a moment. Talk to me. Where did you go?”

“Where didn’t I? We can talk later, Dick, but I’m working.”

He gave her a long look and deflated. “Pint of the amber.”

She poured it herself, dropped it in front of him with a kiss to his cheek, and went to the nearest table of rowdy young men in Durham’s uniforms. “A kiss for us too?” they joked.

“And I’ll put a boot up your asses,” Lyra replied, much to their delight. They continued to heckle and jeer, and she replied in kind, dropping two more rounds off at their table before they left more than enough money to cover their tab.

Dick nursed his drinks, only finishing three by the time Lyra’s shift ended after midnight. He dropped money onto the bar, waited for her to count the change, and picked up his cap, looking as dapper as usual.

“Walk you home?”

“Thanks,” she said, lifting her bag. Out of habit, she stroked the worn handle of the little stick inside. Pan chose to walk with Bindi, talking with her quietly as they wandered through the cool night to St. Sophia’s.

“What’s wrong with the leg?”

She wasn’t surprised he noticed. Her limp was discernible after being on her feet all day. “My uncle shot me.”

“I’m serious, Lyra!” he exclaimed.

Well, she could hardly fault him for assuming she’d lie. “So am I.”

They stopped, stared at each other, and he pulled her into another strong hug. Lyra sank into his embrace, enjoying his strength. She’d missed him. “Didn’t know you had an uncle,” he said against her hair.

Lyra laughed as she pushed him away. “I didn’t either!”

“Where is he now?”

“Not a threat anymore.” Lyra glanced at Pan, who leapt like a flowing river of strength onto her arm. He settled onto the shelf that her hood made, his tail brushing her cheek gently.

Dick watched that, offering a smile. “Glad to see you found him.”

“I am too. Things were bad for a long time, but…”

“You’re happy? With each other too?”

“Yes.”

“Not going to give me any detail about where you were?”

“I was all over, Dick. It’ll take more than five minutes to explain.”

“How ‘bout I pick you up for dinner next week. I promise a full pint of beer too! What night works for you?”

Lyra wasn’t entirely immune to his goodnatured grin, and she offered him one right back. “Thursday. You pay.”

“I was asking, what'n I?” He walked through the gates with her, jeering at the disapproving look he received from the nightguard, and said, “Might I come up?”

“ _No_. Goodnight, Dick.”

“Give me one place you went.”

“Do you remember when the Magisterium elected that man to preside over their council?”

“The president, wasn’t it? The first one was killed pretty quick like.”

“I was there when he was murdered. Goodnight, Dick.”

“Wait! You’re a goddamn tease.” Two girls entering the building shot Dick disapproving looks, and he shrank back, his easy grin not enough to earn their approval. Lyra winked at him and disappeared upstairs.

* * *

_I en’t one for prose, but Charlie, I ache for you. Missing you terribly. Not just your body, because I do miss that, but all of you. And Laine. You were rocks to me, so stolid and comforting._

_The boys I was with before you were mostly good. Nothing wrong with what we did in bed, but I thought to myself with you that passion is so much more with someone you feel passionately about._

_Will and I promised each other that if we found someone we loved in our worlds that we’d not think about each other, regretting what we might have had. I promised, but I never thought it would happen._

_Yet, here I write to you. I told Will not to wait for me because we could never be together, but Charlie, please wait for me. I’ll scrape the funds together to visit you, and we’ll talk in person about what we can do to be together._

_Please write. I need to know how you are. I need to know you still love me._

_All my love,_ _  
__-Lyra_

Dame Hannah was more than a little astonished by Lyra’s progress with the alethiometer. Even with just watered down English rose tea, she was able to settle into the frame of mind needed to fall into the answers to her question.

Hannah supplied Lyra with absolute questions, ones she already knew the answers to, and Lyra answered with enough detail and speed to astonish her.

“If I didn’t know you, I might consider you were lying to me and already knew the answers. But I know that isn’t the way to explain this.” She waved a hand over Lyra’s alethiometer and then supplied her own. “Try with mine.”

It wasn’t the first time they traded alethiometers. Lyra settled in and fell, but it was more grating, and her innate knowledge of the alethiometer symbols and the subtle timing of each pass was shakier. She gave a rough answer, and this time, felt a little ill.

“Strange,” Dame Hannah said.

“It doesn’t fit. I’ve never felt the change like that before.”

“You’re accustomed to your own. You’ve been studying it for nearly a decade.” Dame Hannah tucked her alethiometer back into its velvet case, a signal that their practical lessons had ended. She made to rise, but Lyra beat her to it, making a pot of tea and returning with cups for both of them. 

“There are limitations,” Hannah said as she watched.

“Only present situations. Finding things is easy, but it doesn’t work for complex answers. Like Bonneville’s.”

“But better,” Hannah replied. “What happened to that man?”

“Died,” Lyra replied. “I killed him ‘cause he was trying to kill me. Anyway.” She knew how Hannah liked her tea and put in the appropriate fixings, returning the teacup back to her teacher. Out of the blue, she said, “Charlie prefers coffee.”

“Savage Texans,” she said dryly, accepting her tea with a probing look.

Lyra smiled to show she took no offense of Charlotte’s offense. It didn’t escape her that Dame Hannah let her steer the conversation away from Bonneville. Lyra could still feel his fingers around her throat. Of Charlotte, she said, “Not so savage. She has particular tastes on the bean, roast, press, and milk and sugar.”

“Your alethiometer method… Is it like when you could read it as a child?”

“It’s been so long that I’m not sure. But maybe. I think the frame of mind is similar, but the interpretation is different. Truth would just come to mind before, but now there’s a muddle of different meanings truth could take now. If I know the frame of reference, it’s easier to decide which piece fits into the puzzle. And I was less...limited by time and circumstance then.”

“Mm… Could you write that down for me, Lyra?”

She wrote what she could remember saying, which wasn’t much. She’d always been a cleverer talker than writer.

“How are your classes getting along? You look tired.”

“I’ve been working between.”

“Lyra, there’s funds to be had—”

“I’m grateful, Hannah, but I won’t be caught out again.”

“And you want to be able to travel.”

“Yes.” She refused to blush, thinking of the fantasies she’d already hatched about her next vacation. She hardly thought they’d get out of bed, she and Charlotte. If only Charlotte would write to her; Lyra had expected a letter weeks ago and sent half a dozen little ones in a bundle the day before. “I’m doing well in my classes. I’m not behind on my assignments. And I’m putting some thought into what post-graduate studies I’d like to pursue.”

“Tell me what you’re considering.”

“Economics. How trade is shaped by seemingly unrelated things: like balloons and the Magisterium and the supply from other countries across the world. Like this rose oil business. I’ll always study the alethiometer, but it won’t do for a profession, will it?”

“No, likely not. I’ll have to introduce you to Tom Hickle from Durham. He’s made a great part of his career studying patterns such as those.”

“I would like that. Thank you.”

* * *

_Received my first grade on an essay yesterday. Top marks. I’m doing well in Spanish language class. My reading skills are still better than my speaking ones, but I’m enjoying it. I won’t lose what I learned in Salinas, though the dialect differences drive my professor crazy. She pulled me aside last lecture and asked how in the world I picked up Andean slang._

_Pan snuck out for the first time last night, but he had a nice story of chasing a mouse across the Botanical Gardens when he arrived back just a little while later. He wanted to go—not to get away from me—but he also wanted to come back. Glad he doesn’t feel guilty about the need to leave sometimes. Glad he told me he was going before he did._

_The gyptians are supposed to be coming through in a few months. I’ll have to visit Tony and Billy Costa._

_Oh! I forgot to say in the last letter, but I had my first dinner at Jordan College last week. I sat with the visiting scholar, a_ _woman_ _from Denmark. Lovely lady, doing research in entomology, in particular symbiotic relationships between fungi and insects. Never knew there was such a relationship. The funny thing was that her dæmon was an armadillo. The only type better would be an anteater!_

_Pan is rolling his eyes, says I’m the silliest human he’s ever known. I tend to agree most days._

_My friends want me to go to a concert next week, an opera. They pitched in and bought me a ticket because they said I was too cheap to buy one myself. Guess I’ll have to dress up in my nicest outfit and try not to fall asleep._

_All sorts of rumors are going around about my time away. I told Dick that my uncle shot me, and I told a few girls about being attacked regarding my tooth and hand. You’d laugh to hear all the tales they’ve invented. Of course no one asks. It’s like my parents: considered a source of great trauma so no one asks but everyone talks. Let them have their fun._

_I love you so. I miss you. Wish I could write poetry or draw a picture or write in some way that isn’t so affably dull. I could be vulgar, but that isn’t how I feel about you_ — _or at least not all of you. Sometimes I can be very vulgar when I think of you._

 _In love and lust,_ _  
__-Lyra_

Charlotte’s first letter arrived two months into the term. Lyra checked her mail—usually a fruitless venture, but one she’d been religious about checking every post morning—and was stunned and delighted—then terrified—to find a beaten letter stamped from the Andean Nations. It was disappointingly thin.

She nearly went back to her dorm room, but Pan reminded her she hadn’t eaten the night before and should really get breakfast. Lyra ate distractedly, burning to open the letter but unwilling in a room full of girls that would probably be interested to know who sent it.

“Open it if it’s that important.” Miriam dropped onto the long table across from Lyra and looked pointedly at the letter. “Where is that from?”

“Salinas. A town in the Andes.” Lyra turned the letter over to read the address again. It was marked from “Ms. Charlie Sutherland” to “Ms. Lyra Silvertongue”. Lyra recognized Charlie’s home address in Ecuator, but she’d written Dame Hannah’s address. Why not Lyra’s dorm? She’d written enough letters with her own address. Dame Hannah herself had penned a neat correction, but there was no postage from Brytain. Instead, she’s written ‘by hand’.

Lyra was filled with warmth at the gesture. She gave up the pretense of her breakfast and dropped her tray off in the appropriate station. She waved goodbye to Miriam, who returned her gesture with a bemused smile. Lyra didn’t care how strange it seemed; she jogged back to her dorm and up the steps and collapsed into her desk chair as she tore open the letter.

Pan scrambled up to read alongside her. “There’s no date,” he said.

_Dearest Lyra,_

_There are so many things to say to you that I scarcely know where to start. You asked me for courage, but surely you know by now I have little of that. Yet you make me want to be brave. I do love you, so much so I can’t quantify or qualify it. You blew into my gray world like a splash of vibrant color, and now that you’re gone… I can scarcely breathe._

_I miss you desperately. I swore I would pretend I didn’t, but I can’t lie to you. Laine tells me I’m a fool for letting you go, but even I could see you needed to return home. And I’m a coward, and the only person more sorry for that than you is me. I don’t deserve you, but that’s made me so grateful for every moment you’ve given me._

_You said that you seemed to always meet people that you would need in your journeys. I’m glad for it, even if I was there because of my skill. Even if that ends up being all I can give you, I’m thankful for the chance to have served some small part of your life._

_There’s something I couldn’t say before you left. That last night at home, you called me your happily ever after… I’m honored to have earned that title, even if it was just in the moment. So I’ll take it one more time:_

_Your happily ever after,_ _  
__Charlie_

“You goddamn fool!” Lyra shouted. She wanted to stomp and scream and tear apart this miserable mess of a letter because the _why_ didn’t exist, the damn ‘why’ that made Charlie as good as give her up.

“Lyra,” Pan said in rebuke.

“I’d rather she pretend to not care. Because all she does is beg forgiveness, tell me she loves me, and can’t say why she won’t come here! What is this short thing? And that bit about being important to me because she’s a surgeon?”

“She’s frightened, isn’t she? The last time she built her life around someone else, it ended in disaster.”

“I’d rather ride a crashing ship to the bottom of the ocean than never get on for fear of the water,” Lyra muttered. But she hadn’t been, and part of her remembered that aching cycle of holding everyone at superficial level. Even moving on from that, she had no objective description of how she did so. If she did, she could write Charlotte and tell her to do ‘A, B, and C. Then come to Brytain and be with me, damn it’!

“Poetic,” Pan replied. The twitch of his tail was the only indication he shared her anger. She was in no mood for his pragmatic view. Then he gasped, “Oh, don’t tear it.”

“I won’t,” she said, smoothing the paper out. “She’s tragically romantic, isn’t she?”

“Well, why don’t we go about letting her know those problems she cited aren’t actually a problem? Something to do at least.”

Lyra choked out a laugh. “I suppose. Something else to add onto all the other things. But, yes, you’re right.”

She had a lecture that afternoon but had little motivation to go. Pan directed her to be responsible, and they did their best to concentrate during the next hour and a half.

The last person Lyra wanted to see that afternoon was Malcolm Polstead, but she couldn’t well ignore him, not after what they’d been through. He read something in her expression that made his smile turn sad. “Might I take you to dinner? Seems we’ve been skirting the fact we should talk for some time.”

She studied him, felt some trepidation, and knew even if she feared his feelings, she had never feared the man himself. It was time to put this behind them and air out all the awkward feelings that existed between them.

They settled on a bottle of an Italian Primitivo and both gazed at their glasses in silence. Then, with a long sigh, Malcolm began to speak. “We told you what happened when you were a baby. But I didn’t say that I loved you then. I thought then that I would be a slave to you for the rest of your life.”

He raised a large hand, blushing as Lyra’s expression twisted in shock, and he said, “I promised I would be truthful, and that’s the truth, as odd or even...unseemly as it sounds now.”

“How could your feelings for a baby change to what they are?”

He looked at her almost helplessly, still flushed from his confession. “You’re… Lyra, you’re beautiful in so many ways. It was wrong to be attracted to you with how we knew each other, but it felt inevitable.”

“When?” Lyra demanded. “When did it start?”

“When I tutored you.” Malcolm lowered his eyes in shame. “I never would have acted on it—”

All Lyra could remember was her insolence and irritation. His shy fumblings made more sense in the new light, but that understanding filled her with revulsion. “I was a child!”

“Yes!” he exclaimed. Malcolm wiped his eyes. “I was tortured by those inappropriate feelings. It was sexual, and I’m still so profoundly ashamed of that. I know I’m too old for you—”

“It’s not your age. It was _my_ age at the time. And your position as my mentor.”

He released a long breath and closed his eyes. “I thought so too.” He cleared his throat. “Your Charlotte… She’s my age isn’t she?”

“I suppose so.” It had never occurred to Lyra to compare their ages, and now she was surprised. Malcolm had always seemed so much older, but Charlotte she’d seen as a peer. But why?

“I suppose I was damned by our circumstances,” Malcolm admitted. He finally took a sip of his wine. “The last thing I’ve ever wanted was to frighten you, Lyra. Or make you feel...pressured by my feelings. And I did all of that, at the worst possible moment.”

“The soldiers… Malcolm, you didn’t frighten me like them.”

“I saw the look on your face,” he rebutted, biting his knuckle before he wiped his eyes again.

“I’m sorry.” At his look of surprise, Lyra smiled tightly. “That because of the nature of me, of what I’ve done, you were dragged into being chained to me. Haven’t you thought that these feelings you carry for me were created to get us both to the rose garden? They’re manufactured—”

“No,” he said softly. “I have to believe I loved you because of who you are, Lyra. To discount it as a trick of fate, it would be discounting how extraordinary you are.”

“Loved?” she asked quickly, filled with hope.

“Our time apart…” He smiled. “Well, you told me about your Will. Has your love faded?”

Faded? “No. It’s just...deeper, under all the other feelings I have for other people and things.”

“There,” Malcolm said quietly. “Our time apart put a few layers over it, and I’m doing my best not to let it be dug up again. But in all that, I can’t discount the part you played. Not that you encouraged me in any way, but that you are just that remarkable. You can rely on me, Lyra, and I hope to never make you look at me the way you did that day. I just hope...that you know you can trust me with your problems.”

It couldn’t be so easy, but Lyra decided to pretend it was. She offered Malcolm a smile. “I’m sorry for how I treated you on the trip back to Brytain.”

“You were missing her.” He cleared his throat. “If you want to speak about her, I’m—”

“Even I’m not that cruel,” Lyra retorted more sharply than was fair. She chewed on her lip. “I do have a question. About the more detailed influences of the Great Revolution and emancipation of Texas from New Denmark.”

For a moment, he looked stunned. Then Malcolm laughed.

“I’m not asking you to write my term paper for me, but if you have any references you would recommend, I’d be obliged.”

“Well…” He brushed the basket of chips aside, removed a few slips of paper and a pen from his bag, and laid them out on the table. “Why don’t you tell me what you have so far, and we’ll go from there?”

An hour later, firm on the subject and structure of her term paper in American History and feeling pleasantly warm from the wine she’d shared with Malcolm, Lyra found herself happy. She waved goodbye to Malcolm—though he seemed worried she refused his offer to accompany her back to St. Sophia’s gates—and released a long breath into the cold air.

Pan tucked himself into her hood, warming her neck better than any scarf. “It was productive.”

“Might we ask Alice about him when we visit her next?”

Pan laughed in her ear. “With our luck, we’ll drive them apart instead of together.”

“It _is_ hard to picture them as a couple. You’re right. We should leave well enough alone. Not like I’m doing so well with my own love life as it is.”

“She’ll come around.”

With her current contentment, Lyra found herself agreeing with her dæmon.

* * *

_What I said about finding people I needed at particular times in my life? I didn’t mean that about you in your capacity to stitch me back together, at least physically. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like my love for Will would always be the only love in my life, and then you arrived just as I was learning to move on._

_It wasn’t that you took my affections away from him, or that you made me see past him. Just more that you were in exactly the right time for me as I started to move on from him. I was almost lulled into the possibility of you, and I was happy for it. You are so much more than a doctor to me. For you to think that’s what I meant…_

_Well, I’m cross with you for that._

_And the bit about deserving me? That en’t what love is, and you know it. There’s no deserving. There’s just being better together, and you make me better. I make you better too._

_Also, how can you write so little yet take so much time? I know you’re capable of thousands of words in a day. Charlie, I love you. I’m not strong enough to toil away in this silence. Tell me you love me. Tell me about the weather and the Webers and what you’ve been eating and how much weight you’ve moved in the last week._

_I want a piece of your life. Please give me at least that._

_And you’re still my happily ever after._

_Waiting for her happily ever after to have some sense,_ _  
__-Lyra_

As it turned out, no one in Oxford’s medical school had time for her, and the Andes National embassy pointed her to the Office of Brytish Emmigration, which did not reply to the first three letters Lyra sent to their office in London.

A fruitless fortnight it had been, though she’d done well enough on the two essays she’d submitted. And Dick had her around for dinner with his family again, which was a pleasant affair.

During their lessons that week, Dame Hannah suggested Lyra put on her best clothes to attend a dinner party with a few of her associates. Lyra was surprised to be asked, but she’d mingled with older academic types since she was a child and found herself anticipating the Friday night party. She missed her talks with Jordan’s scholars, having only been invited to two of them through the first half of the semester, and found a happy flare in her step as she made the quick walk to Dame Hannah’s apartment.

The house, which was usually well lit by natural light in the afternoon, was warm from the yellow anbaric light fixtures. The glass of whiskey Lyra received in hand felt similarly warm, and that warmth spread from her belly to her cheeks at her first sip.

Some days, Lyra wished she had nicer things. Looking at the well-dressed individuals in this home, Lyra felt that need keenly. She remembered Mrs. Coulter’s sharp, bold clothing and had the vague desire to emulate her in that at least.

Then Dame Hannah came ‘round and folded Lyra into a warm hug, and the feeling of inadequacy passed. Dame Hannah thanked her for coming then let Lyra loose on the room full of older men and women. The closest in age to her was a young man that made her nervous by how nervous he was to talk to her. Being the youngest by at least ten years meant they were rather stuck together at first pass, something Lyra regretted almost immediately.

His name was Hugh Darcy, and he was in the middle of being mortified by the awkward joke about chemical formulas which Lyra didn’t understand—nor did she understand why he was so embarrassed the joke flopped—when an older gentleman handed him a drink and interjected into their conversation. 

“Lyra Silvertongue,” the newcomer said, holding out his hand. He had gray in his mustache and temples, a deep, pleasant voice, and a kind smile. “I’m Jason Grant. Dame Hannah has sung your praises over the years so I’m delighted to finally meet you.”

Lyra took his hand, hoping she didn’t look as thankful for rescue as she felt. Hugh took the opportunity to escape. Mr. Grant’s dæmon was a gray fox, sleek and beautiful with a surprisingly pleasant grin. She and Pan were already chatting.

“Mr. Grant. Thank you.”

“It was painful for us all,” he said quietly, his eyes twinkling with laughter. “Hannah tells me you’re studying at St. Sophia’s?”

“Yes. I’ve a year and a half left, hopefully. Then with some luck, on to the doctorate program. What do you do, Mr. Grant?”

“I guess I have the advantage; forgive me. I’m a professor of surgery at Oxford Medical College.”

 _That_ gave her a start. She glanced at Dame Hannah, who winked at her from across the room. She would not squander this opportunity. “Mr. Grant, I actually have a few questions you may be able to answer if you don’t mind.”

He seemed surprised by her sharpened attention but regrouped quickly. “Well, I can’t make any promises. Shall we sit?”

They took two soft armchairs in the corner. Their dæmons relocated beneath the chairs. Lyra sipped her drink and considered how to phrase her questions. “If a surgeon from Texas wanted to relocate to Brytain, how difficult would that process be?”

He looked properly surprised by her question this time. “If their license is up to date, it would just be applying for the skilled labor permit and taking a few practical and written tests.”

“What if the license was given under a different name?”

“Oh, well, I don’t think that would be a terrible difficulty. They’re all verified by fingerprint in Texas, so unless your acquaintance lost his fingers, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“And practicing in Oxford?”

“A surgeon would be limited to the Oxford Medical School Hospital or the General Hospital, and I’m afraid we’re fairly selective about the staff positions we hire for the university. General Hospital is limited on funds for their surgeons, but positions do open fairly frequently.”

Lyra wracked her brain for what details she could remember from Charlotte’s past career. “What if this surgeon was hired on as the youngest staff surgeon at Hier Medical School?”

Mr. Grant’s gaze sharpened. “Well, that may be another matter altogether.”

“And if the surgeon was a woman?”

“That should make no difference if she’s skilled and passes all the certification,” he said neutrally.

“And this skilled citizen permit? Is it hard to be approved?”

“For doctors and surgeons, the process is fairly guaranteed. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one rejected actually.”

Lyra felt a lift in her spirits. She smiled at Mr. Grant, who appeared taken aback by her expression of happiness. “Thank you, sir. You’ve been very helpful.”

As she rose, he cleared his throat. “Lyra, forgive me, but… Would you happen to be asking about Charles Sutherland?”

Lyra bit her lip and knew she already gave it away. “How much do you know about Charlie?”

“Met him during his second year at Hier Medical College. There were some...odd rumors after his disappearance, but what I remember is a somber, hardworking, exceptionally skilled young man. He made a name for himself for developing a technique to preserve some function of limbs after partial and full hand amputations. Did a lot of work on the soldiers coming out of the New Denmark and Texan war. And helped develop a protocol for orthopedic surgery that doesn’t require general anesthetic. Prolific researcher too. If Charles Sutherland is considering the move to Oxford, we’ll take him and thank him for it… Whatever pronoun he prefers.”

So it was known. Lyra felt some of her tension fade. “Thank you, Mr. Grant.”

“Do let me know if you have more questions.” He reached into his coat and handed her a card, which Lyra tucked away in her handbag. 

Dame Hannah came around next, introducing Lyra to Tom Hickle, a middle aged man who looked like he cared less about the state of his hair than Lyra. His frog dæmon was perched on his shoulder and licked her eyes intermittently. Lyra’s exchange with him was pleasant enough and took up a great deal of the evening. In the end, he promised to lend her a few texts and had keen interest in her newspaper clippings from years past. They set a time to meet at his office in Durham, and by that time, many of the party guests were trickling out the doors.

Perhaps it was by chance, because the few that remained retired to Dame Hannah’s dining room table, and they began to talk of things that the Magisterium would not approve. Lyra sensed she had been set up; Hannah had mentioned she would like Lyra to bring her cards. 

Indeed, that was the next topic.

Lyra opened her card pack and set a few on the table in sequence to demonstrate their properties. 

“Where did you get such a pack?”

“A man on a train from Smyrna to Seleukeia.”

“What was a young woman like you doing in a war zone?” one older woman wanted to know.

“That seems to be the question,” Lyra replied, her pleasantries decreased proportional to the amount of liquor in her belly. She replaced her cards in their pack and felt stung that she’d been put on this display by someone she considered a friend.

“Won’t you read for one of us?” asked one man.

“George, that isn’t why she’s here,” Dame Hannah said, but Lyra’s obstinance reared its ugly head. “Who shall I read for?”

“How about me?” Mr. Grant volunteered.

“What do you want to know?” Lyra asked him.

“Tell me something about my wife that I don’t know,” he replied rather quickly.

It _had_ been a setup with his easy question. Lyra paused before she settled fully in her seat. She met his gaze. “Are you sure?”

“I have nothing to fear,” he said with a pleasant smile.

Well, if she revealed something horrible, only he would be to blame. “What’s her name?”

“Constance.”

Good, stout name, Lyra thought. She glanced at Pan, who shot her a look as if to ask, ‘Are you sure?’ She wasn’t anymore, not since Mr. Grant had volunteered himself. Her sharp vindictive thought had cleared, and now she felt hesitant. Lyra took a long breath as she settled into her seat. She closed her eyes and wished for rose water or the infused tea from the card cafe in Salinas.

“May I have tea?” she asked Dame Hannah.

That caused a roll of muted laughter. Of course they thought she was stalling, but perhaps she was. Mr. Grant assumed a relaxed position, his smile kind. “Hannah has said before that you’re her apprentice in studying the alethiometer?”

“Yes. It’s a little less straightforward than the cards, but they’re surprisingly similar.”

“Are the cards directed by Dust too?”

“That’s what the man on the train told me.” Tea in hand, Lyra sipped and held it in her mouth, finding that quiet place of peace as she shuffled the cards. Through it, she pulled the question he’d asked into mind. She indicated Mr. Grant should cut the deck, and the first card came to hand.

Her hands moved almost without her input, and she murmured an echo to each card placed. “Loss. Disappointment. Fear.” Clouds and thunder and a wet dog wandering amongst the brushes of a river, the dog finally lying down to die. “Death.”

That card repeated three times. So much death.

The next card she turned was a baby cradled in the arms of a rosy woman on the road. “A child,” she said quietly. The next card was a young girl, playing in the field, holding hands with a woman. “A girl,” she said. The clarity of that card, of the sunshine and happiness sprang from meaning, and that meaning was, “A healthy baby girl.”

Several things happened at once: Pan nipped her knuckles, Lyra became so disoriented she fell out of her chair, and Mr. Grant rose so quickly from his seat that his chair went crashing to the floor. 

“How dare you!” he gasped. “How could you?! Who told her?!” The last shout was directed around the room. He was shaking, white in the face, and stared at Lyra as if she’d struck him. “I won’t stand for this. My wife has _suffered_ , and you rub my face in that?!”

Lyra could only blink up at him in incomprehension. After he stormed out and Dame Hannah’s party was well over with ill feelings, she decided it was best never to read cards for anyone but the most desperate.

Dame Hannah fixed her another cup of tea—Lyra had knocked the first onto the carpet when she’d fallen—and said, “I should never have let it go that far.”

“Why was I so offensive?”

“Lyra, surely you can guess.”

She thought of the sequence of cards. “They’ve lost children before. Miscarriages? So much so that they’ve given up hope.” She frowned at her hands, brushing Pan away from where he was attempting to clean the bite mark in her knuckle. “Some party trick. How do fortune tellers make a living at all? All I do is make people angry, even with good news.”

“They lie,” Dame Hannah replied dryly. “Lyra, did you know?”

“Of course not.”

“I thought not. That was most extraordinary. I admit I was dubious about your cards, but I stand corrected.”

“I hope he won’t be cross with you because of that.”

“I’ll speak with him. Jason is a good man, and he’ll probably be mortified at his display once his anger cools off. Don’t worry on my account.”

“Should I write him a note of apology?”

“It might be helpful, but let me speak with him first. Would you like to stay tonight?”

“Can’t, but thank you. I have an early shift at George’s tomorrow.”

“You need to rest sometime.”

“I’ll rest when I’m dead.” Lyra threw on her coat and waved goodbye at Dame Hannah’s door, lifting Pan under her coat to protect him from the cool rain.

* * *

_Today was a hard day. I miss you._

_Love,_ _  
__Lyra_

In all their busyness, Lyra found the time to peruse the library for Charlotte’s book. She found it in the literary section. She removed the book, stroked the worn backing—for it had seen some reading in the way that all the supposedly forbidden books did—and looked at the front.

 _The Great Pretender_ by K South. 

She read it to feel closer to Charlotte. No word in weeks, exhausted, and so missing her lover that this depressing tale—which Charlotte admitted was written in the throes of her depression after leaving her life behind—was still more word than she had now.

“Do you think she’s working on a book?” Lyra asked Pan after they stoked their little fire and curled up in bed with the book.

“Maybe,” he said hopefully. He lay between her breasts and read along with Lyra as Charlotte painted such a brilliant detailed picture of the tiny apartment she’d shared with May—Maggie in this tale—for their few years of Charlotte’s undergrad schooling. It was a symbol for the cage that Charlotte was unknowingly constructing around herself. The bed gained quite a bit of attention through the story, its brass supports likened to prison bars. May always liked the same kind of bed frame, even when they moved into their rich apartment later in life. The passage about May and Charlotte’s love-making in that prison of a bed made Lyra feel ill.

She was in small part jealous of May. Not that she’d been with Charlotte, but that she’d experienced this younger, surely different version of her and hadn’t appreciated what she had. Anything else wasn’t worth noting. Charlotte was almost clinical in the vague description of what they did: as in Charlotte did the doing and May did the receiving. 

Lyra let her mind wander, trying to recall the particular taste of Charlotte, the soft noise of she made just before she orgasmed, the feel of her body.

“Selfish,” Pan remarked.

“Maybe it was their way. Happens that I don’t like that way. That’s only half the fun, right?”

Pan laughed. “Turn the page!”

It took a week to finish the book, in part because Lyra stayed up much too late reading and rereading a few passages she’d forgotten. Charlotte’s description of one of her female classmates and the brewing tension between them that amounted to nothing—because her classmate couldn’t know her gender and Charlotte was honest to a fault—made Lyra feel more than any of the passages in which Charlotte described her then wife.

“She was with her out of obligation,” Pan remarked.

“Yet she’s not here, with us,” Lyra said quietly. “Sorry. Hard to be hopeful with no letter in so long.”

“She’ll write.”

“You have more faith than I do.” Lyra sighed, feeling the drag of the book before the climax, with Charlotte in her deepest throes of dysphoria and anxiety, all accompanied by a male pronoun. Then, at last, she let herself be just a little: she started to grow her hair out and referred to herself with female pronouns.

To think hair length triggered the end of a decade long relationship. May’s words in this passage—surely true given what Laine had said—were unforgivable.

“I hope I never meet this woman. I’ll be liable to do something ugly to her.”

“Once you’d say you’d like to meet her to do something horrible to her.”

“I’d rather not go to prison.”

The book suffered for lack of a last chapter. It ended with Charlotte walking out of her home, shutting the door on her life (and wife) of deceit and the prison she’d constructed for herself forever. It worked so well for literature but so poorly for the story. 

When Lyra first read it, she’d flipped the blank page to the back cover in confusion, hoping for more, for some spark of happily ever after or at least some passage about George finding her feet and living well, writing her story, maybe finding someone who loved her the way she deserved.

With suddenly refreshed annoyance, Lyra rose, settled at her desk, and wrote her own ending:

_George went on to settle at an undisclosed South American town and become herself. She grew out her hair, wore dresses as well as trousers, practiced law part time, wrote a novel to compartmentalize that terrible part of her life, and continued to train her body._

_She lay on the beach, read any book she could find, and eventually met a young woman vacationing from Europe. Their affair was slow to start, but once together, they did not part because they loved each other devotedly. Her new wife never asked her to be anything but herself, and they lived happily ever after._

Lyra copied the note again, tucked the dry one into the back of the book, folded the second into her bundle of letters to be sent out in the morning, and felt as if she’d done something profound.

* * *

_Dear Charlie,_

_This is a proper letter. I was angry when I wrote the last one, but I realize I’ve been writing silly little bits. So here’s a proper one with more information and cohesion. Let me start with:_

_You vex me terribly. I’ve been inquiring about all those obstacles you cited as reasons we can’t be together, and I find them all easily surmountable. If you don’t want to come to Brytain, please just say so. It gives me hope when I realize how easily I can fix the other problems you claim will keep us separated._

_And for a writer, your love prose could use work. There wasn’t a single reference to my heaving bosom or warm, wet pearl. I’ve been lonely enough without you that I probably wouldn’t even laugh if you likened my crotch to a clam._

_Jordan has invited me back with open arms. The servants threw me a homecoming party, and the new headmaster sat me down, apologized for the previous one’s horrible handling of the entire affair, and said I would always be welcome to_ my _room at Jordan on break or otherwise, and that my presence would be appreciated at the scholar’s table when I find the time. I think I wrote to you about the scholar though, the one with the armadillo dæmon?_

 _I’ve nearly exhausted meeting my friends again, but every time I think that, another person exclaims they thought I was dead. Even Dick, an old boyfriend who knew why I was leaving_ — _remember, he sent me to his gyptian grandfather?_ — _was sure I’d died. Bastard. He says he can get me a job at the mailroom for good pay during our short break. I’m curious about the work and would welcome the funds._

_My classes are interesting enough, I suppose. I’m studying, but I wish there was a card cafe around Oxford. Seems the perfect studying atmosphere._

_I met a man here who knows of you. His name is Jason Grant, and he had nothing but glowing praise for you. If you write to him, don’t mention me. We had another mishap with the cards. I suppose I’ll have to retire any thought of reading for individuals. I’m apparently too honest for fortune-telling to be a lucrative profession._

_Pan sends his love and asks after Laine. I hope you’re both well. I’m saving money to visit during break. I wish I could surprise you, but I’d hate to invite myself if you’d rather I not come ‘round._

_Yours,_ _  
__Lyra_

_Post-script: You’re still my happily-ever-after. I miss you. I love you._

Bleary-eyed from her late shift at the pub and considering how much coffee she’d need to inhale to stay awake during her morning lectures, Lyra completely missed Jason Grant until he was standing in front of her.

It was strange enough to see a man in their cafeteria that conversation hushed around him. Pan hissed at Lyra before she took note, and she looked at her tray forlornly. She was too tired to be hungry anyway.

“Let me drop my tray off.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Grant said quickly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast.”

“Well, I’m not likely to survive my morning lectures as it is.” She set her tray aside and followed him out into the cool autumn morning. 

“In that case, can I buy you breakfast?”

“I’d be grateful. How about George’s?”

Mr. Grant didn’t know the place, and Lyra led him there. George took one look at her and plucked his biggest coffee mug off the wall, filled it, and set it in front of her with a pointed look. “Take Saturday off.”

“Can’t. I’m fine.” It was poor timing to yawn her head off. Pan didn’t help in the least. He lay curled up on her bag, already asleep.

“If you show up like that, I’ll turn you away,” he grumbled. He glanced at Mr. Grant. “What’ll you be having?”

“Morning special,” Mr. Grant said with a smile.

“Not going to ask me?”

“I know what you need, Lyra,” George said.

Mr. Grant glanced from George to Lyra. “You work here?”

“As many shifts as I can manage,” she replied. “Mr. Grant, I’m sorry about the other night. I hope you believe me when I say I can’t control the cards any more than the alethiometer.”

He looked stricken. “No, please, Lyra. I’m here to apologize to you. You must understand how hard it’s been, especially on my wife. We’d given up hope. But…” His mouth stretched into a sudden, tentatively hopeful smile. “She told me two nights ago that she’s pregnant. She’s never made it this far along. The baby is a girl.”

She felt a warm glow of happiness for him. Lyra realized then that she’d never doubted the cards. “Congratulations.”

He shook his head, now fighting tears. “Even if… Even if we lose this child, I have hope. We both do. I told my wife what happened, and it’s made so much difference to have hope again. So, no matter what happens, thank you, Lyra.” He seemed at a loss for words. “I’m a man of science, but I’m more than willing to believe.”

“I hope the reading was right, Mr. Grant. The cards were certain.”

He smiled again. George took the moment to drop plates in front of them both. Lyra immediately set into her fried eggs and buttered toast, and Mr. Grant ate with similar vigor. When they’d sated their hunger, he asked, “Have you heard from Charles?”

That put a dip in her spirit, and his smile shifted into sympathy. “It’ll work out.”

“Or I’ll work it out myself,” Lyra replied with more confidence than she felt at the moment. She glanced at her watch, and Mr. Grant nodded to her. “Go on. This is on me.”

Pride rose hot and fierce, then it fluttered out all at once. “Thank you, sir.” She collected her bag, considered the run back to St. Sophia’s on a full stomach, and took that risk. Sitting out of breath and hot in her first lecture was the perfect way to stay awake. The caffeine worked its magic in the second, and at that point, Lyra took her study break for the perfect opportunity for a nap.

* * *

_Feel free to write to Jason Grant now. He came by St. Sophia’s in person to apologize and tell me my reading was right, at least so far. He was kind enough to buy me breakfast, and he sent a fancy thank you note as well. His wife wrote in it too. They invited me to dinner, and I suppose I’ll have to accept to be polite._

_Things move along, but my longing for you hasn’t waned. I used to think my poor heart was bruised by losing Will, and it’s doubled now. Every little hurt or sadness I encounter—usually not my own, mind you—will put tears in my eyes quick._

_I used to never cry. Now I feel like I can cry on command._

_I dreamed of you last night and woke up frustrated to find myself alone. I must see you again. Every day without contact makes me more impatient for you._

_Missing you,_ _  
__Lyra_

Lyra was sad to have missed the summer for several reasons: her day on the bench with Will had come and gone, and though the situation had been well out of her control, it felt like a betrayal. She’d also missed the horse fair and all the gyptians flocking to Oxford.

A few gyptian families would be around as autumn deepened. Lyra took to studying on warm enough days on the river side of St. Sophia’s campus. The gyptians rarely kept specific dates, but Tony and Billy Costa liked to visit Oxford around November, coming south along the Cherwill River, and Lyra was keen to see them again. She really wanted Ma Costa but knew the woman wasn’t likely to make the trip.

For all her watching, she missed the Costa’s boat. A postcard in her mailbox raised Lyra’s spirits when she saw who had sent it. Against all odds, it was Ma Costa’s flamboyant handwriting instructed Lyra to visit as soon as she found the time.

It would be two days before she found a moment to herself, and Lyra itched to be folded into Ma Costa’s strong hug.

“You’re distracted,” Dame Hannah said. It wasn’t a scolding, but Lyra felt shamed all the same.

“The Costas are here, and I’m going to see Ma Costa later. I didn’t know she’d be coming to Oxford at all. She was supposed to be moored up at the Fens.”

“Ah.” Hannah offered a little smile. “You’re already there. Go ahead.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not unhappy to be here—”

“Why don’t we reschedule the rest of the lesson then? Friday at two? Or do you have work?”

“I have a shift at the Society Cafe at three, but if we met at one, that would work.”

“One it is.” Dame Hannah chuckled. “Society Cafe? What would you have thought as a girl about working in that kind of place?”

Lyra thought of the frilly apron, the strict dress code, the proper pronunciation, and the fact that every server was a pretty young woman, and she pulled a face. She would have expected the cafe to be frequented by preteen girls putting on airs and ogling old men, but the clientele was at least more diverse, in part because the food was just that good.

Dame Hannah judged Lyra’s expression and laughed. She had a rich, lovely laugh that warmed Lyra’s soul. To her surprise, the older woman pulled her into a firm hug and kissed her temple. “Go, enjoy your visit.”

“Thank you!”

As she was wont to do, Lyra ran the distance between Hannah’s apartment and the Oxford Canal. She spotted the _Persian Queen_ and shouted her ‘hello’ perhaps too enthusiastically. 

“Lord help me, but you’re a sight for sore eyes!” Ma Costa stepped onto the deck of her boat, and as soon as Lyra climbed aboard, dragged her into a warm, hard hug. Lyra sank into her arms, enveloped in safety and love.

“You’re still as skinny as you used to be. Don’t that college feed you better? Come on, eat dinner with us.”

The ‘us’ was Billy Costa, who offered Lyra a sly grin. “How’re you getting on, Lyra?”

“Getting on,” Lyra replied with some snip. She and Billy had had a fairly disastrous time together several years before, but she supposed he wasn’t the worst person to have such a horrific first time with. They’d both been shocked and then laughed with each other over the thought of how badly they’d bungled what seemed a simple thing.

“En’t so simple, I guess. You have a lot of oddness down there.”

“I’m perfectly normal!” Lyra had exclaimed, striking him on the shoulder with her fist.

They hadn’t tried a second time, and that suited Lyra just fine. The bumbling first time turned them off of any further romantic pursuits, though Lyra had been fueled by curiosity, not affection. It was fun to tease each other, just not within the presence of Ma Costa. Lyra still made sure to help Tony and Billy with their horses each year during the Horse Fair, and they repaid her help by letting her ride her pick when she asked. They also were reliable to send letters back to the Fens.

“See you and your dæmon are back to normal. Sorted it all out?”

“Most of it,” Lyra replied. “Right?”

“I’d say so,” Pan replied. He accepted a few nibbles from the eel stew, likely remembering Lyra’s prolonged monologue about all the different ways to make the best eel stew possible. She’d said she was half tempted to do them all and see if perfection was additive.

After supper, Ma Costa shooed Billy away and settled in with a long look at Lyra. “So tell me, girl. What happened?”

One did not lie to Ma Costa so Lyra told her. She let Pan interject when he wished to say where he’d gone, but Pan kept to himself for the most part. Of the rose garden, Lyra could scarcely remember how she explained it to Charlotte in a cohesive way. Ma Costa listened quietly, and when Lyra finally trailed off, she said, “So it’s sorted now? This matter of the Authority?”

“Yes. Think so. That’s what Xaphania said. We’ve got to deal with the human matters, the Magisterium, but it’s manageable, I think, especially now that Delamare is dead. Ma Costa, how is Farder Coram?”

“Oh, Lyra…”

She knew what Ma Costa’s look of sorrow meant and felt the loss like a blow. Pan made a sound of distress and wormed into her arms. “When?”

“Just a few weeks after you left. I’m sorry, Lyra. I know you loved him. He loved you too. He’d be glad to see you looking like yourself again.”

Tears stung her eyes, and bitter selfish emotion rose. “I hardly got to say goodbye.”

“You think that old man needed a drawn out goodbye? No, he’s happy enough where he is, and you know that.”

“He’ll have so many stories,” Pan murmured. “Enough for everyone around him surely.”

There was another layer of sadness, thinking of Farder Coram stepping back into the world to be blown away and scattered among all the particles of the universe. He was so rich with knowledge and love that his impact would be great. Lyra felt herself smile; she and Will had given him the ability to reconnect with the world.

She’d forgotten in the years since stepping out of the world of the dead.

Ma Costa cupped her cheek and kissed her forehead, drawing her into another warm, crushing hug. “Now go home and rest. Come visit me again. We’ll be here another week before we return to the Fens. I don’t know if I’ll be back again, but you visit me and you send word how you’re doing, you hear?”

On the way back to St. Sophia’s, Lyra pondered Pan’s silence during the telling of their separate journeys across the continent. “Were you ashamed?”

“I left you,” he said softly, his head turned away.

“I made you,” Lyra retorted. “No one blames just one of us. We’re one and the same, and even if you left, I pushed you to go. Ma Costa wouldn’t look at it like that.”

“Jal had words to say,” Pan admitted.

“It’s just another part of our story.” Lyra considered Farder Coram’s rich history and wondered if Charlotte had worked on their story at all in Lyra’s absence. 

“Maybe we should stop being so careful.”

“About what?” she asked, her hand going to the little stick out of habit.

“Hiding our past. Hiding that we can separate. Hiding that you love Charlotte. Everyone’s so scared of different, but we can show them it isn’t so different after all.”

“I like that,” Lyra said, heaving a sigh as an unnamed weight lifted off her shoulders. “But we’ll have to be brave.”

* * *

_I asked for a longer letter, but I’ll take short ones if this is the time between them. It’s nearly December, and only one? Don’t make me lose hope in you, Charlie. I don’t think I can handle that._

_I’ve been tired. Working and studying are fine, but I’ve been doing too much of both. I fell asleep during an alethiometer lesson last week. Dame Hannah put me to bed in her guest bedroom for the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully, I didn’t have a shift until that night at the pub._

_Dick came around again. He has a new girlfriend, but I think I was rather nice to her. She didn’t care for me even so. Dick said it’s because I’m too pretty, but he’s always been a flirt._

_As for me, I look more like my mother every passing day, and that’s frightening. She was beautiful, but she looked...like a feral cat you’re sure will climb your leg at any moment. I’d rather not be that frightening. Am I?_

_How is Laine? It’s coming ‘round to summer again, isn’t it? Keep dry and cool._

_All my love,_ _  
__-Lyra_

_Post-script: Still my happily ever after._

She was vexed by every passing day without another letter. Charlotte had promised, but fat lot of good that promise was worth. Irrational fears plagued her: Charlotte was sick or hurt, she didn’t love Lyra anymore, her letters were intercepted. If not for the two letters Mrs. Weber had sent that had brief mentions of Charlotte, Lyra might make herself believe the worst. As it was, she was tortured by the irrational hope that Charlotte was coming here to surprise her for a visit. Better yet, to move permanently so they build a life together.

She sighed mournfully at the hope her imagination could give her.

“What’s wrong?” Miriam asked, settling next to her, her tray of lunch in hand.

“Lovesick,” Lyra replied. “And exhausted. I have a shift this afternoon at Society Cafe, then I have two days off. Blessedly.”

“Lovesick?” That perked all the girls up around her. “You have a new beau?”

“Apparently not. No letter in weeks,” Lyra admitted. It was only later that she realized they knew who she wrote to, but Lyra found no reason to care. She checked her watch and hurried herself. One lecture to attend, then all of afternoon tea time. If they were busy, she might ask to stay on until they closed in the late evening.

Pan slept through the lecture, but Lyra took careful notes as a favor to one of her friends who was off on family emergency. She tucked her notes into her bag, hoisted it across her shoulder, and took off at a quick walk to make it in time to tidy herself when she arrived at the cafe. There was nothing she could do about her shabby clothes, but her hair and sweaty face could be dealt with.

“Is it time to rest yet?” Pan asked, clinging to her shoulder with his sharp nails.

“I don’t want to hear it. You slept through all my lectures today.”

“One of us has to sleep sometime.”

She had not rebuttal for that truth. She wished the cafe wasn’t halfway across Oxford, but she’d known that when she took the job. Some days lined up so that her shift at Sophia’s started just after she finished at George’s, which was half the distance between St. Sophia’s and the cafe.

She arrived with five minutes to spare, pleased her leg had held up without a problem. Her shift lead, a stern but affable woman, looked at Lyra like she was an utter disaster. “Just a few minutes!” Lyra promised, dropping her bag in her locker. She washed her face, smoothed her hair, and straightened her clothing. When she tied on her white server’s apron, she looked respectable enough, even if her gold tooth caused more looks at a high society place like this than the pub.

It was busy that day—lots of university students enjoying the start of their weekend after finishing their afternoon lectures—and Lyra was happy for the distraction. She was on her feet the entire time, taking care of her assigned tables by taking orders, serving tea, delivering dishes, and the most miserable part of it: bussing the tables. The bus boy had called out sick, and all the girls were complaining about it.

She was nearly halfway through her shift when a commotion at the table of six in her section drew her attention. When she saw her friends from St. Sophia’s, she relaxed her facade of serving and flounced over, taking their orders with an insolence that would have gotten her released if the owner heard her. Her friends, however, laughed in delight.

By the time Lyra came around to their table again with their tea in hand, they’d started chanting her name and all at once launched into complaints and requests. She dropped the tea with a clatter and went eye to eye with all of them, managing a stern expression for a few seconds. “You’ll get me sacked!”

They all hissed and giggled, acting like children, but Lyra couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a bright spot in her afternoon. 

As she straightened to begin sorting the teas, she felt a jolt of joy and had a brief moment of confusion. Pan, Pan had felt it, and Pan was gone off her shoulder, racing through the tea room at full tilt, beyond what was considered a normal distance for a dæmon to travel. Well, she thought, they’d agreed to be less careful. Her mind focused not on the gasps of shock of those around her but the reason why he’d run like that.

On the other side of the tea room, she could see…

Oh, even if bear dæmons were common, she would know who was standing across the room. That was Charlotte, here in Oxford, at the Society Cafe of all places…

The next thing Lyra knew, she’d dropped her tray with a clatter and moved quickly among the tables, striking a few chairs with her hip, but what did it matter? She saw Laine, almost shivering in her confined location, and Pan chattered happily as he flowed up onto her shoulder.

Lyra staggered to a stop just a few paces from Charlotte and stared. There she was, in her shirtsleeves and a vest and looking so beautiful and dapper and just as shocked to see Lyra. —but why? Lyra lived here and Charlotte didn’t. In her absence, Charlotte had somehow grown more beautiful, but maybe that was just the tearful smile she offered.

“Lyra,” she said. “I’ve come to—”

Then Lyra was in her arms. Charlotte crushed her close immediately, and Lyra was overtaken by her smell: roses and vanilla and the spicy hint of her sweat. Nothing else existed in the moment, just Charlotte and her strong hold on Lyra. She breathed Charlotte in and let the reality of her presence soak in as truth.

Charlotte was here. She was here in Oxford, and Lyra was folded tight in her arms. This woman held her like she’d never let her go.

“What are you doing here?” Lyra pulled back enough to wipe her cheeks and nose. She rarely cried like this and never looked attractive doing it. Charlotte didn’t bother to wipe her own tears. That smile was back, blooming even wider. She was devastating.

“Being brave,” was her so-serious answer.

“Oh!” Lyra stared a moment longer before she understood the pronouncement for what it was. “You’re...coming to stay?” Lyra wasn’t sure if she would cry or faint or laugh or do it all at once. She’d been losing hope that Charlotte still loved her, and now her best hopes were being met. She gave Charlotte her entire attention and helplessly reflected Charlotte’s wide smile. 

“You were right. Everyone should have a happily ever after.”

“But why didn’t you write? I’ve been waiting for months!”

“I did. I just… I didn’t send them. I’m sorry. I have so much to be sorry for. And I’ll spend the rest of my life apologizing gladly if you’ll let me.”

Lyra sank back into Charlotte’s arms in the closest thing to a romantic swoon as she’d ever come. The look in Charlotte’s eyes—hope and love and apology all in one—begged a kiss. Lyra tucked her head against Charlotte’s shoulder to save them both. She closed her eyes and exhaled heavily. “I don’t reckon it’ll take our whole lives, but I _am_ cross with you. You kept them, didn’t you?”

“Yes. To be hand-delivered. I sent one when I left, but I’m here before the letter, apparently.” She lowered her voice, her breath sending a delicious shiver across Lyra’s neck. “Our dæmons are being shameful.”

“No more than us,” Lyra replied. When she opened her eyes, she looked beyond Charlotte to the man sharing Charlotte’s table. “Hello, Mr. Grant.”

“Hello, Lyra.” He appeared bemused if not embarrassed, and Lyra suddenly realized she had work to do. And that a cluster of her friends had witnessed that tearful, messy reunion, not to mention Pan a farther distance than he should have been. Well… She couldn’t find it in herself to give a damn. 

Still, she’d rather not lose this job. She pulled away and tried to wipe her face again but decided it was hopeless. She felt an illogical rush of despair, but Charlotte wasn’t going to disappear in a few hours. “I have to work.”

“When do you get off?”

“I don’t even know what time it is,” Lyra laughed. “I, uh…

“Six,” Pan supplied from where he’d tucked himself against Laine’s neck.

“Well, finish your shift.” Charlotte squeezed her hand, her dark gaze full of promise. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yes, but— Shit,” she whispered, seeing the shift lead come ‘round the edge of the dining room to fix her with a look. Lyra wiped her face again, made a face at Pan, who looked like he didn’t want to budge from his spot on Laine, and darted back into the kitchen to finish her shift.

Her friends were blessedly nice for the rest of their stay. They ordered too much, ate half of it, and left far too much money to cover the tab. Her pride smarted, but she collected the extra for herself. Then a new, light thought broke through: she wouldn’t be saving up for an zeppelin ticket to Ecuator. Charlotte was here, in Oxford!

That, paired with the note from Charlotte tucked into her apron pocket, filled her with enough energy to keep her going well past her shift. It was a busy night, but Lyra didn’t ask to stay. She crouched beside the lockers and unfolded the note, smiling to see Charlotte’s messy handwriting.

_I’m at the George Street Hotel. Room 352. Dinner tonight? I’d like to apologize properly. -C_

“Haven’t ever seen you smile that wide.” The other serving girl, Francis, had been taking care of Charlotte’s table, and she’d handed the note over with a curious look. They got off at the same time and had gone to the pub for a drink once or twice. 

Lyra couldn’t suppress her grin and gave her thanks to Francis for delivering the note again.

The George Street Hotel was just a brisk walk away, and she could barely suppress her desire to run.

“Who cares if you do?” Pan asked, but Lyra had better sense than to get run over by a car on her way and said so. She reminded him he’d die if she did, to which he had a sassy reply.

The hotel elevator took ages, and even Pan was too distracted to tease Lyra about her jumping leg. She didn’t miss the long looks the other two tired occupants of the elevator gave her, and it was in that moment that Lyra finally realized she’d forgotten to take off her frilly server’s apron.

When the sixth floor door opened, she started to leave but paused when the other two occupants shuffled off. Her impatience was setting Pan’s fur high, but at least the slow-moving couple was going in the opposite direction of Lyra.

She checked the note once more before knocking on room 352’s door. When it opened, her next actions were like pulling another card from the deck or falling into the alethiometer’s puzzling meaning. She had no conscious thought of anything but Charlotte’s arms, meeting her lips, and holding on for dear life.

The next thing she was truly aware of, she lay tucked in the crook of Charlotte’s strong body, relaxing bonelessly as her breath came back. Lyra closed her eyes and nuzzled closer, feeling sleep darken the edges of her consciousness.

“I’m going to fall asleep. I don’t want to yet.”

“We have time.” Charlotte’s breath caressed her temple, and she pressed a soft kiss to Lyra’s cheek.

Sometime later, Lyra jolted awake. She was confused about her location, especially when she saw Charlotte sitting up in bed beside her with a book in hand. This wasn’t Salinas. They were in Oxford, in a hotel room, and… Lyra felt a burst of joy.

Charlotte met her gaze, her own eyes widening. “Good God, how did I think I could give you up?” She leaned over, and their kiss was firm and all encompassing. When they finally had their fill—for the moment at least—Charlotte brushed a thumb beneath Lyra’s eye.

“You look tired.”

“I’m not anymore.” Her yawn belied her words, but Lyra sat up to stretch, drawing Charlotte’s long look. They needed to talk, but Lyra needed food before anything else. “You promised me dinner.”

“Beside you. I can order another, if you’d like.”

Lyra tugged her dress back on, not bothering with any buttons or clasps, and she dug into the cooled shepherd’s pie until her hunger was immediately sated. It was hotel food, but she’d had worse. She glanced around for Pan, who curled up in the corner with Laine. They were talking quietly, pausing to nuzzle and lick.

Charlotte opened her arm, and Lyra shrugged out of her dress again before she settled into the familiar place against her chest. “I’m sorry. For a lot,” Charlotte said. “I meant to surprise you yesterday. I had the whole thing planned. But bad weather slowed us by nearly a day. I had all my interviews scheduled as soon as I got off the zeppelin, and I couldn’t miss them.”

“An interview at Society Cafe?”

“Jason offered to take me after my second interview this afternoon. I’m glad I saw you, otherwise I might have taken weeks to build up the courage to find you. Once I got here, I was sure you’d have changed your mind.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a fool. I didn’t write for so long, and you’re… Well, I tortured myself imagining you finding someone else, moving on. That’s why I didn’t write, but then the possibility of it working almost crippled me.”

The very thought annoyed her. “I’m not so changeable as that.” 

“No, I realize that. But this… You still wanting me, forgiving me… I’m not used to things working out the way I want. It’s just too good to be true.” Charlotte’s gaze swept down to Lyra’s lips.

“We have got to work on your self-confidence.”

Charlotte nodded. “A severe fault, I think.”

“Well, I don’t suffer from that. I’ll have to teach you my ways.” After another kiss, Lyra brushed her fingertips over the curve of Charlotte’s bottom lip. “You’re really here to stay?”

“I am. I’ll have a job one way or another. The details aren’t important.”

“They were important before.”

“They were an excuse. Because I was terrified: of my feelings, of you, of destroying what good we had together.”

“I’d rather destroy it trying than throw it away before we can begin.”

“I know. I’ve just… I spent so long regretting my entire relationship with May that I put that on everything else in my life. It wasn’t fair to you. You aren’t May, and I’m not Charles. Laine reminded me of that more than a few times. And I can offer you something valuable. So what are a few details to having this chance with you?”

“I want to hear about the details.”

“Of course you do,” Charlotte laughed. “Well, I’ve been as good as offered a position at Oxford Medical School. My fingerprints are enough to link my license and identity to me, but it’ll be a little bit of paperwork to fix my gender. I’ll need to do a few practical tests, perhaps a semester as a resident, to prove I’m still up to snuff on my surgical and medical skills. My position will be dependent upon my work past that.”

“Will you be a Ms. again?”

Pure ego colored Charlotte’s voice. “No. Texan surgeons are doctors, not butchers. I worked hard for that title, and I’m keeping it.”

Lyra laughed at that uncharacteristic flare of passion. “Sure you don’t just want to write for a living?”

Charlotte gave a quiet laugh. “I did a lot of writing these last months.” She nodded to the bedside table, where a stack of ribbon-bound folded papers lay. “I nearly burned them, but—”

“I'd be furious with you!” Lyra greedily lifted the stack of letters and opened the ribbon that bound them. There were so many, all more than one sheet of paper too. “This must be at least—”

“Two a week most weeks. Not always news. Some notes. I’m sorry I didn’t send them.”

“Well, they’re here now, aren’t they?” Lyra set them aside. Those words of the past would be reading for later. Now she needed her assurances in person. “Did you get my letter about what I meant, saying I found you when I needed to?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand?” Because that was the most important thing. Charlotte’s gaze was intense, but Lyra didn’t look away. Charlotte nodded and said, “Yes, I do. You’re right; we are better together.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said softly, her eyes not leaving Lyra’s.

“Do you want to build a life with me?”

“Yes. More than anything I’ve wanted before.”

“Will you be faithful to me?”

“Of course.” These words were accompanied by a soft kiss.

“Do you trust that I love you too and I want all those same things?”

“I do.”

“Well, glad you finally came around, you fool,” Lyra said with a happy laugh. Charlotte smiled her gentle smile and drew Lyra’s mouth back to hers for so many lovely kisses. When she pulled away, Lyra grumbled unhappily. Charlotte settled her head on the pillow beside Lyra’s and brushed Lyra’s hair aside to meet her gaze. “I have a proposition.”

“You already have me naked in your bed, and we’re as good as married now. What more could you want?”

Charlotte wasn’t deterred, even when her smile widened at Lyra’s words. “Would you like to write a book with me, Lyra Silvertongue?”

“A sequel to yours?”

“Yours was very good,” Charlotte laughed. “I nearly sent it in to the publisher.”

“Not properly long enough. We need more pages of happiness than the first book’s sadness.”

“Mm. Then, yes.” More seriously, she said, “But before that, we need a prequel, one about your Secret Commonwealth.”

Lyra drew a long breath and released it. She could. It would be published as fiction, perhaps considered heresy, but the whole point of it all was to spread her story. It was time to not be so damn careful. She’d forgotten that in the years since she’d passed through the world of the dead. “The harpies need a truth, don’t they? We could give people plenty of truth.”

“And a happily ever after?”

“Obviously.”

Later, as Lyra dozed with her fingers entwined with Charlotte’s and Pan draped across her neck, she thought of Will for the first time in so long. Their day would come and go this year, and she would sit on their bench again for the first time in two. She had something to make up for last year. This year, she could tell him she was happy, and she could say she truly hoped he’d found his own happily ever after. 

That was what they promised each other after all.


End file.
